Cheetah Kill

This is something that I never thought I would witness first hand. Three cheetah's stalking, chasing and killing a baby Topi, yet you see it on wildlife programmes all the time. The main difference between real life and the TV is that it is over in literally a few seconds. You don't get to see it repeated or in slow motion. Also when you see it on TV it seems less real, even though it is natural behaviour in order to survive, being so removed from my everyday life I didn't know how I would feel about seeing at first hand, one animal kill and eat another. All I can say is that I didn't think much at all, it's just so amazing to watch, to be part of it. The skill and speed of the cheetah is breath taking. My husband always wanted to see a cheetah kill so that he could say the words 'that was ballistic' like Johnathon Scott on the Big Cat Diaries, and the one chance he got he was so mesmerised that he didn't even remember to say it!

Tension builds from the moment one of the cheetah's first looks around and spots a likely target. They must communicate in some way or just maybe act from pure instinct, because they work as a team, with one stealthily approaching the baby Topi directly, keeping as low as possible and blending in with the long grass, while the other two move out wide in different directions to cut off the Topi's escape. All the while, barely able to breathe, wondering will they be successful, both wanting them to be and wanting them not to be at the same time.

After watching the chase and the kill we drove around to where the they had settled to enjoy their meal. The cheetah that that had taken the lead and had done most of the running and chased the baby Topi down was out of breath and was resting while the other two were already tucking in. The only thing was, the Topi was not yet dead and cried out one last time, the mother who was standing not far away also heard this. I've never been one to transfer human sentiments onto animals and I have no idea how gazelle's think and feel but I for one was a little upset for her.

Cheetah's tend to eat as quickly as possible in case another, bigger predator comes in and takes their meal away from them but today they relax a little as there was nothing else around.

I will be in Kenya for the month of April so will not be posting any new blogs for a while but will be back in May with lots more stories and photo's.

A Hippo's Life

Hippo's are not yet an endangered species but they have recently been added to the vulnerable list due to destruction of their natural habitat. Fortunately due to their size they don't really have any natural predators. That's not to say lions, hyenas and crocodiles wouldn't attack a baby hippo, they might have a go if they were hungry but they would then have to face a very angry mother hippo equipped with long, razor sharp incisors and is not afraid to use them.
Hippo's are generally placid animals and lead fairly sedentary lives, lazing at the waters edge during the day where they can submerge when it gets too hot, then grazing for around five hours each night, while its cool. Each night they would cover an area of one or two miles and travel even further from the river during the dry season when grass is not as abundant and the ground is dry and over grazed.

The groups of hippo's that live along the banks of the mara and talek river quite happily share their habitat with crocodiles. It is the large males that pose the biggest threat to other hippo's when they fight each other for the right to mate with the females and to keep hold of their territories when the water dwindles in the dry season.

It is quite relaxing watching the hippo's, its one of the few times when you are allowed out of the vehicle to sit quietly on the opposite side of the river bank to see how they behave. Female hippo's are very maternal, when out of the water the babies try to lay in the shade created by their mother. I watched one mother with two babies try to encourage  them to enter the river in a shallow area by gently nudging them in the right direction. One of the babies walked straight in, no problem and was enjoying the cool water, the other one though was having none of it, the mother would get him (or her, I'm not sure if their is an easy way to tell the gender of baby hippo's) so far then he would slip away from her pretty niftily, so she would have to start again. It was amusing to watch, after about fifteen minutes she did finally get the second baby into the water but you could see that he wasn't happy with the situation and didn't stay in for long.
It's so nice just to sit and watch as the natural world unfolds in front of you, there is nothing like it.

Night Life in Camp

This is an example of the wild night life you can expect if you go camping in Amboseli and if your idea of a holiday is late night partying then this is definately not for you.

We found this local bar sort of by accident while camping in Amboseli, we were relaxing after an afternoon game drive, just waiting for dinner, when a man and his daughter strolled past and stopped to ask us for directions to the bar. The first thing that suprised us was that anyone was strolling around at all since there was no fence around the campsite and you wouldn't know what you might come across, the second thing was the idea that the campsite actually had a bar, and finally what suprised us the most was that they were Irish! These were the first Irish people we had seen since we first started coming to Kenya and he seemed conviced that there was a bar around somewhere. He promised to let us know if he found one.

The next day after our game drive the thought of a nice cold beer seemed like heaven so we asked our guide if there was a bar in the campsite and to my amazment there was, he said he would drive us there because he was concerned for our safety, I'm not sure if it was that or he just fancied a beer. So we pulled up at what looked like a garden shed with a guiness sign on it, as you can see from the photo, I'm not exagerating. Inside it was very busy. It wasn't much bigger than a garden shed, there was the serving hatch at one end with a few plastic tables and chairs for the customers. Most of the seats were taken by groups of Maasai men in their traditional dress complete with rather large knives and playing cards. This was a little worrying as I had never seen so many large knives outside of a kitchen. Can you imagine a Dublin pub where everyone came carrying a knife, you just know that nothing good would ever come of it.

Our guide explained that these local people were working for a conservation agency and were currently carrying out a project concerning the elephants. So we grabbed a couple of chairs and relaxed with a beer. After a while I noticed that there was another room with people coming and going, I was a little curious as to what was in there or as my husband would say just plain nosey. I couldn't resist going over to have a look inside, I tried to be casual about it, which was difficult since we were the only white people there and I was the only female, but no-one stopped me so I carried on. To my complete surprise it was a games room, just large enough to hold a pool table. It didn't matter that the ground was uneven and the pool table unsteady they were having a great time and so were we. It was definately a day of surprises. We stayed for a while before going back to our tents as we had an early start in the morning taking a final game drive before our long drive back to Nairobi.