Lions and tree at play: Video
Published by Wildcaster 1 year ago Tags: adventure, africa, african birds, animal kingdom, birding, birding african birds, blogumentary, conservation, documentary, ecotraining, education, experience, flickr, GLTP, gonarezhou, Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, hunting, impala, lions, malilangwe, Malilangwe narrowcasting, mashable, narrowcasting, night, Open Content Alliance, pamushana, peace parks, photos, podcasting, predators, teach, video, wildcasting, wildlife, wildlife documentary, youtube, zebra, zimbabwe.Hungry and lean the lions were off to an early start, before sunset. Again it was giraffe first thing in the evening. It was a slow long stalk but it just didn’t materialise.
Of course after all that exercise they just had to rest.
An hour later it was slowly on the move again. A poor little Scrub Hare suddenly had 8 huge cats charging down on it. Crash and they were in a pile on top of it! While they fought with each other, all believing the other to have caught the bunny, the hare popped out from under their legs and took off into the darkness. The lions were none the wiser their food had taken off and mulled around baffled that the little fellow could have given them the slip.
After several more rests and casual strolls across country the Nduna pride got into serious hunting mode. They fanned out and surrounded a lone wildebeest bull. The tactics were good but the bull found a gap and didn’t look back as he got away safely.
Why is it at dawn when the hunting is all over that suddenly the lions have piles of energy? All night they’re totally lethargic and at dawn go playfully wild.
After 2 days hunting in the clays, the lions headed north at dawn resting south of Chitindigova. So hopefully tonight they’ll be out the clays and back in animal country and more chance of a successful hunt. They’re looking a little lean at the moment.
I went back to my impala around Banyini still hopeful to catch even just one magical moment of an impala birth.
While waiting in the shade with them, I heard chicks being fed and in a mopanie tree close by found a Lilac-breasted Roller feeding it’s chicks. They are such stunning birds. The nest is a hole in the tree and the chicks look pretty big already.
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Hi Kim,
Around how old are these two? Are they Manyari’s cubs?
Thanks
Ivanova
Hola Kim,
Interesting reverse psychology about the lions and heavy clays. Do you happen to know how old Nduna is? Does he have any pink on his nose still? I recently learned that the young males have pink on their noses, and are not fully maned. More mane and black noses with a little pink shows them to be about five years old. Was surprised when I saw Nduna’s mane, has South Africa permitted full-mane lions to be hunted out like Botswana? Permit is a key word here, Botswana charged $l0,000 to kill a male lion and of course all the “hunters” wanted big manes, so that full-mane gene has been selected out. What a dishonorable occurrence.
What is it about the tree? They are sharpening their claws to make sure that they do not miss the next bunny, or better yet wildebeest or buffalo. They really do get the lean and hungry look quickly.
moira
Those cubs are about 2 1/2 years old. Yes Manyari’s cubs.
Don’t know how old Nduna is. but getting on. Dark nose. His mane used to be really tatty and hardly there. but in the last month or so he’s suddenly looking quite impressive again. Seems to come and go. Maybe he has his own personal hairdresser.
South Africa has more control on their hunting. But very very sadly there is also a lot of canned hunting.
Oh, Kim, afraid I cannot say in a public forum what I think about canned hunts.
Never occurred to me a male lion could have a “bad mane day!”