Dec. 30, 2021 - Day 4 in the Masai Mara

In the morn­ing we start­ed again at 6:00 am. Accord­ing to Caleb, the 4 chee­tahs had killed a wilde­beest the night before. It’s a pity that we did­n’t get to see it, but you could­n’t have fol­lowed them with the car in the rain anyway.

This morn­ing the weath­er was nice again, so that a great sun­rise in the Masai Mara was to be expect­ed. Nowhere are the sun­ris­es (and sun­sets) more beau­ti­ful than in the Mara. A pho­to­genic aca­cia tree was quick­ly found. The spec­ta­cle began already before the actu­al sun­rise with a pro­nounced morn­ing red:

Then the sun came out, here an HDR image from three sin­gle shots:

,Kenia

A short time lat­er and in the most beau­ti­ful morn­ing light we dis­cov­ered a lioness with two very cute cubs. We could fol­low them for a while. The moth­er walked over the grass, the cubs ran a bit ahead, then fell back and looked around with inter­est. They then noticed that mom had moved on and hopped quick­ly after her.

Here are a few more indi­vid­ual pho­tos of the lit­tle ones. These are already very high on the cute­ness scale:

The only thing miss­ing from a Steiff Ted­dy is the but­ton in the ear.

Then Caleb was told over the radio that anoth­er leop­ard had been spot­ted near­by. We imme­di­ate­ly made our way there. Once there, how­ev­er, it was­n’t all that easy. The leop­ard was lying in a small pit and could hard­ly be spot­ted at first. In addi­tion, the best obser­va­tion posi­tions were already blocked by oth­er vehicles.

But we are already safari-expe­ri­enced and know that patience on a safari often pays off. We there­fore stood there for a good 2 1/2 hours. By using the gaps left by the vehi­cles of oth­er impa­tient safari guests dri­ving away, we slow­ly but sure­ly came clos­er and clos­er to the leop­ard lying in the grass.

But when we final­ly got a bet­ter obser­va­tion posi­tion, it got up and lay down again a bit low­er. We drove to the oth­er side of the riv­er and could see a part of him, but he final­ly stopped in a lane and did­n’t make any effort to get up again. Rather the oppo­site was the case, as this extend­ed yawn shows:

,Kenia
Yawn­ing leop­ard, Masai Mara, Kenya

Appar­ent­ly it was the same leop­ard that we had already observed two days before. Too bad, again we had not suc­ceed­ed in get­ting any rea­son­able pic­tures. But “all good things come in threes”, as the say­ing goes. So we will try again in the after­noon. In the mean­time it was almost 1:00 pm and the heat flick­er­ing made it almost impos­si­ble to take good pic­tures. We there­fore decid­ed to dri­ve back to our camp.

Even the hye­nas found it too hot, they sought cool­ing in pud­dles. Caleb called this “Hye­na Spa”:

,Kenia
Bathing hye­nas, Masai Mara, Kenya

Lunch and a rest break were wait­ing for us in the camp. As a small sign of con­so­la­tion on the way back we dis­cov­ered a mar­tial eagle sit­ting high on an aca­cia tree:

,Kenia
Mar­tial Eagle, Masai Mara, Kenya

Since we were back at the camp rel­a­tive­ly late, we imme­di­ate­ly went to lunch. At 4:00 pm we meet again at the car and try our leop­ard luck again.

Afternoon gamedrive

The pud­dles were free again. Har­ry com­ment­ed that the hye­nas were now prob­a­bly hav­ing their mas­sage. On the way back to the leop­ard we saw two ibis species sit­ting in har­mo­ny on a rock next to each oth­er, on the left a Hagedash and on the right a Sacred Ibis:

After that we spot­ted a Pal­lid Har­ri­er on the ground. After a short wait, it took off, so I man­aged to get some pic­tures of the take­off sequence. I love the high con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of the Canon EOS R5!

Now we went again to our leop­ard. Caleb had learned in the mean­time over the radio that even a sec­ond leop­ard had been sight­ed there. This fact had already spread around quick­ly. When we arrived at the described place, there was already a huge crowd of cars:

Safari vehi­cles, Masai Mara, Kenya

Again, we had to have a lot of patience. But this time it was real­ly worth it. Slow­ly we were able to move into the gaps of the vehi­cles that had left in the mean­time and thus came clos­er and clos­er to the leop­ard from the morning.

Final­ly, it got up and walked away. Caleb once again had the right instinct. He some­how knew in advance exact­ly where the leop­ard would go and brought our car into opti­mal pho­to posi­tions again and again dur­ing the pur­suit. He had cer­tain­ly arranged this with the leop­ard in advance😉.

It now became appar­ent that the cat was a female leop­ard with an ado­les­cent cub.

It seems to be a typ­i­cal teenag­er: Appar­ent­ly the young one had annoyed the moth­er so much that she want­ed to rest alone first. She walked now after the noon rest to her young ani­mal and set­tled down direct­ly beside it. First the lit­tle one was licked extensively:

But the young leop­ard was very keen to play and the mum­my final­ly joined in. She had rest­ed suf­fi­cient­ly at noon. This gave plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty for action pho­tos. All fel­low trav­el­ers were thrilled, the wait had been worth it again:

But final­ly it became too much for Mom again. She got up and left. The cub fol­lowed her short­ly after, then both dis­ap­peared into the bushes.

Since it was already start­ing to get dark again, we made our way back. But again, it was worth it not to pack away all the equip­ment immediately.

Just before enter­ing the entrance to the camp, we again saw a pair of crowned cranes per­form­ing some kind of dance in a dead tree. They were prob­a­bly the same crowned cranes we had found in the rain the day before. It was already quite dark again. The back­light sit­u­a­tion did­n’t make pho­tog­ra­phy any eas­i­er either. Over­all, how­ev­er, I am very sat­is­fied with the image yield.

Final­ly, both took off twice for a short round trip and land­ed again on the same tree. This was very nice to watch:

All in all, it was anoth­er very event­ful day with many impres­sive moments. We let the day pass in review again at the camp­fire with a anoth­er Gin-Ton­ic. After din­ner we fell again tired from all the expe­ri­ences of the day into a deep sleep.

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