The lion's share

Some days you just get the feeling that you might as well go home now, there is just no way it can get any better. This was one of those mornings... and we didn't even see elephants!

Yesterday, heading back to camp we encountered a young lioness walking down the road, checking out the waterbucks very thoroughly. We were hoping to be able to spot her this morning as well and that last night's rain would make her easy to track. However, there was no sign of her.

 

The three new, young lionesses have spread out in the lower parts of the reserve and the young male, who was brought in with them, has abandoned them in favour of the two older lionesses. Not an all together bad move on his part, I might add...

Driving down a dirt road with no tracks of other vehicles is a great feeling and there were lots of other kinds tracks everywhere... mostly antelopes and zebras though, our cat searched seemed to be in vain. As we came on to one of the larger plains, our ranger, Adriaan, remarked that there was an eerie emptiness to the place... And a few hundred metres later, we discovered the reason...

During the night or early morning hours the two experienced lionesses had managed to bring down a zebra, as well as a wildebeest... whose relatives and friends weren't about to hang around and watch the feast; thereof all the tracks leading out of there. If I was a lion, I'd also ditch the younger ones and join the two who know what they're doing, bringing down breakfast, lunch and dinner in one go.

Curiously, the male didn't seem to have eaten yet and was resting in the shade some distance away from the females. One of them was still feeding, while the other kept an watchful eye on four hopeful black-backed jackals that nervously kept their distance in wait of their chance. I'm not too sure the jackals needed worrying about the females though, as they both looked like they had chucked down their own body weight in meat and about to trip on their own bellies and fall over.

Suddenly the females moved up into the shade further away, probably because they were about to burst. My mind immediately went to memories and fantasies of Christmas dinner back home...  

 

One of them had been drinking a lot of blood and I almost expected the urine to be pink as she relieved herself before joing her companien under a tree.

 

The male also decided to move, so he stood up and roared once before walking towards the zebra carcass. We were hoping he'd decided it was his turn, but he walked right passed it. Maybe he just wanted to be closer to his new-found girl friends.  

Now the jackals moved in on the two enormous meals and there definately was plenty to go around. Yet, they managed to find a reason to fight over the meat! Portion control guys!

 

Jackals are opportunistic and highly intelligent, but skittish, creatures, so they don't often let you get very nice photographs. This time, they didn't care whether they had a bad hair day however and stayed still long enough to have pictures taken.

 

/A