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| Watching us carefully |
Since we had gone west
the previous day, we decided to head in the opposite direction in the
morning. We were looking for the big
pride that we’d seen the first day, so decided to head for Maasai Koppies. The early morning drive didn’t find them,
although we did come across a nice big male lion sitting on the side of the road. We decided to spend our coffee break with
him, and he soon got up and joined his brother, whom we hadn’t even seen hidden
in the scrub sleeping.
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| Cheetah walking past |
Having no success in
finding the pride, we were driving around when we came across a couple of
cheetahs. Always a prize sighting in the
bush, even though they were quite far away, we decided to hang around. They were pretty alert so we settled down to
keep an eye on them from a distance, while the rest of the safari vehicles
tried to get as close as possible to get a shot before heading off for more
sightings.
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| Cheetah relaxing on the mound |
But eventually our patience
paid off, and one of the cheetah started moving directly towards us, before
lying down on a little mound right next to us.
Finally he moved off, and his brother – a little more skittish – ran
right past us before meeting up with his brother before they headed into the
plains… a really nice sighting.
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| Double-banded courser |
Soon
after that we spotted a clump of cars at a distance. Deciding to investigate, we soon found the
source of the clump – lions. A pride was
heading to the shade of trees, but to do that they had to cross the road, so we
got some nice head on shots of the lions passing the car.
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| Young lion chilling out |
It was just before lunch
when we came across another clump of cars – this time the clump was bigger than
normal. This could only mean one thing –
leopard! Sure enough, a leopard was
sleeping in a tree, very close to the road.
He seemed completely unaffected by the cars around him, fast asleep on
the branch of the tree shaded by the leaves.
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| Young leopard in tree |
From a tourist’s point of view, the young leopard had chosen the best
possible tree, since there was a road on three sides of the tree – access for
ALL the tourists that paraded through to catch a glimpse of him! And that included us, though we chase the
side where there weren’t any cars – it was too much of a traffic jam on the
other side which was closer to the leopard.
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| Leopard resting in a tree |
But the good news didn’t
stop there… about 100 meters on, there was ANOTHER leopard in a tree! What a productive road for leopards ;) After
a while we decided to leave the first one, and check the second – what we
assumed was the young leopard’s mother.
She was in a nice position on the tree, but unfortunately a bit further
away and we were shooting into the sun.
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| Martial eagle with kill |
But
she was still awake, and we were hopeful that she would get down the tree and
walk towards her son. But after about
half an hour, she still didn’t seem to be keen, so we headed back to the first
leopard. This time we braved the throng
of cars and were rewarded with nice close-ups of the leopard – and we were just
in time for him to wake up and stare directly at us, before turning around and
falling asleep again.
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| Coke's hartebeest |
The afternoon drive found
us some hartebeest, where we were entertained by one running around showing off
– can only imagine that he was trying to impress the females, who were watching
him like he was mad… But soon enough we were heading back to the leopards ;) Neither had moved yet, so we decided to settle down
and wait a while with the young leopard.
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| Agama sunning himself |
We decided to be on the opposite side of all the cars, and it paid
off. About 5 minutes after we arrived,
the leopard got up and jumped down the tree. He started walking and we were
able to drive quickly to get parallel to him, before he stopped right next to
us. He posed for a few photos before
slinking off in the opposite direction to where all the cars were jammed – he
really didn’t have a problem with the cars…
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| Leopard portrait |
Finally he crossed
between the cars and headed off into the bush where we couldn’t see him
anymore. Happy with our sighting, we
headed to his mother, but she wasn’t moving, and eventually we left her as well
to get to campsite by sunset. And we had
a nice surprise – the Russians had left and no tour groups were camped at the
campsite, so we had the whole place to ourselves – pretty special way to spend
Christmas eve!
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| A Serengeti endemic - grey-breasted spurfowl |
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