Olchore in the early morning light
Day four in the Mara was less frenetic, but certainly started with a bang as Alfred took over the guiding for a couple of days. The sky was only just beginning to lighten when he spotted a large male Leopard walking purposefully in fairly open terrain. What followed was an hour of following this guy and making the most of the opportunity before he sought cover from the sun.
There are plenty of Black-backed Jackals in the Mara, but unless they are hanging around waiting for their turn to feast on a kill, they tend not to hang around long for a photo session. We were lucky to find one on its own and quite relaxed, so we spent some time watching and photographing.
Later on we caught up with our first Lion sighting of the day when we found Long Neck, a female we’d seen previously, with Baba Yao, a male we hadn’t seen before. Much mating was taking place between them, but not far away was another male with two females. We weren’t prepared for what happened next though and witnessed the spectacle of the male mating with one female and when he’d finished, went straight to the other female and mated with her!
Over the years we’ve seen quite a few Secretarybirds, but usually they are constantly on the move and when you pull up to take a shot, they walk away. Apart from a sighting of one perched in a tree on a previous Mara trip, good shots have been hard to come by, but for once we found a relaxed bird that walked parallel with us and within range for a full 5 minutes.
More bird sightings followed as we made our way to the Marsh area, including another Kori Bustard doing the feather-fluffing cooling routine and Africa’s most photographed bird, the Lilac-breasted Roller. Once at the Marsh, the Lion cubs we had watched the previous day were putting on a show, while a camera crew lunched not a hundred metres away, blissfully unaware.
Sometime after our own lunch, we were to witness another amusing spectacle, unfortunately out of camera range, but it was a good opportunity just to watch and absorb the scene. A female lion and her two sub-adult cubs were out in open ground when the cubs spotted a lone, fully adult Buffalo and decided to give chase. Their inexperience soon showed through as they were unable to combine their efforts successfully, but they didn’t give up. More accurately, they didn’t know when they were beaten and that it was time to stop. Very swiftly the tables were turned and the Buffalo turned around and chased away the cubs. It was very interesting to watch and gave us all a good laugh.
By now we were halfway through the Mara section of the trip and took the decision over dinner to spend next day back at the Hippo carcass from day three. On the way we had a ten-minute encounter with the Topi Plains pride of Lions and a couple of minutes with an Elephant and her sub adult offspring.
Once in position at the Hippo, we were able to watch the interaction between the Crocodiles, the Marabou Storks, various Vultures and not one, but four Lions. Scarface had been joined by the other members of the Four Musketeers. When there was a lull in proceedings, there was a pair of Little Bee-eaters posing nicely. That was us set up for the day, save for a brief visit to a Hyena den on the way back to the lodge.
Back out with Joseph next day, we were on to a lone Cheetah sighting as the sun came up. In fact this same Cheetah book-ended the whole day, where not much else happened. We had some really good bird sightings, but nothing that was new to us and a visit to the Hippo revealed it had finally been dragged out into the river and submerged. What was a highlight of the day was meeting up for the second time this trip with Dr Elena Chelysheva, Head of the Mara Meru Cheetah Project. She was able to tell us the Cheetah we had been watching was Olchore. Rarely have I met anyone so enthusiastic about their work and her knowledge of Cheetahs in general and those in the Mara in particular is encyclopaedic.
We now only had one full day left, but what a day it was to turn out to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment