Although I’m here in the Mara to study hyenas, for some reason I’ve also been lucky enough to have some amazing lion sightings! Here are a few of the best, pictures included!

About a month ago, we (and btw whenever I say we, I mean me and the other researcher at camp) were out in the territory of our furthest clan. It had been raining a little that morning, so there was no one else out other than one of the ranger cars. All of a sudden we came across 8 male lions trotting along the road. There was a group of 4 up ahead, and another group of 4 trailing behind them. All of a sudden the 4 in the back picked up speed and started chasing the 4 in front! They were roaring like crazy too! I’ve heard lots of lions roaring, usually around the camp at night, and they were never this loud!

For the sake of keeping the story straight, the 4 in the back are the sons of this pretty notorious male lion named Notch, so I’ll call them Notch’s boys for the rest of the story. The 4 being chased are from further down South near the Tanzania border, so I’ll call them the South 4.


(This is Notch, though he’s acting a little doofy right now!)

So the South 4 in front run, and Notch’s boys give chase, and both the ranger car and we are speeding down the road to follow. Then, the South 4 decide, hey, we’re not going to be muscled out! So they regroup, turn around, and they chase Notch’s boys back!!! They chase them all the way past this really picturesque watering hole, and then the South 4 spread out around this watering hole and start hollering and roaring all around it to stake their claim! It was crazy to see, one even climbed this little cliff behind the watering hole and was standing on it, think Simba standing on Pride Rock style! And then Notch’s boys decide they’re tired of running, so then turn around and chase the South 4 again! So off they go in the opposite direction! And picture us and the ranger car, first speeding one way, turning around, speeding back the way we came, then oops, they turn around and off we go in the opposite direction again. It was amazing to see though. They went back and forth several more times before we lost them on a really rocky plain.

















Later on we talked to the Disney crew (Disney Nature is working on a full length film about the big cats of the Mara, and the film crew has been out here following the lions and cheetahs for almost 2 years I think). Amanda and Owen, who are in charge of the lions, have been filming lions pretty much non-stop for over three years and they said they’d never seen a territorial battle that big. The biggest one they’d seen was 2 vs. 2 in one of the other reserves (Tsavo, I think?). Some of you may appreciate this, Amanda and Owen have actually done some filming with David Attenborough (ok, maybe a little bit of hero worship going on here)! They've been doing nature/documentary filming for like20 years! We felt really bad that we were out of cell coverage at the time and we couldn’t let them know about this, but at least the light was not really good for filming (cloudy and nearing dusk) so they didn’t miss any footage. I would have liked for them to see it though.

A few days after that, I was out doing obs on my own. It was drizzling and pretty overcast and I wasn’t having much luck finding my hyenas. I was driving down one of the roads, and I see a big golden mass walking towards me along the road. I stop the car and kill the engine, since it’s headed toward me anyway and I don’t need to follow, and as the mass comes closer I see that it’s actually 3 lionesses and 9 lion cubs walking in a group. They walk right up to the car and just sort of split up to walk past me on both sides. They were SO CLOSE. We have to drive around with the windows open (SOP, better visibility and all), and they were so close that I could have literally just stuck my hand out the window and grabbed their tails. THAT CLOSE. And this is one of the smaller cars I’m in, so the lionesses’ heads were just about level with my very open windows. They went past me and I was about to stick my head out the window so I could look back and count them (since we need accurate carnivore counts) and there was one straggler lioness running to catch up with the rest of the group that raced right past my nose!!! My face was very much: O.O

I may have slightly deficient self-preservation instincts though, because I was way more “OMG THAT WAS SOOOO COOL” than I was “Wow, there’s nothing but an open car window between me and these lions.” Heh.



Fast forward a little. Two weeks ago, we were out looking for hyenas in the morning and we see what we think are 4 lionesses walking down a hill towards us. Again, we record all carnivores we see in addition to studying hyenas, so we waited for them to get closer and as they pass right in front of the car, we see they’re actually sub-adult male lions, not adult lionesses. The Disney crew is following these subs as the main characters in the movie, so we immediately call the Disneys to let them know we’ve found their subs, and we’ll follow them to keep track until they can get over there (bush courtesy, everyone tries to share info on where you’ve seen each others animals). So we follow the subs all the way to a look-out point above the river, and just as Amanda drives up they go over the edge and down to the bank of the river.



So we’re thinking, hmm, WTF are they doing? They’re not going to cross are they?! It’s been raining A LOT so the Mara River is really high right now. And then suddenly, there are four lions struggling through the water, battling against the current! AND THERE ARE THREE HUGE CROCODILES CLOSING IN!!!

Amanda was freaking out, my jaw completely dropped, and everyone was holding their breath! One of the lions lagged behind, and one of the crocodiles was within a meter of him when he finally heaved himself on to the opposite bank! Then the lions sat soaking wet on the opposite bank and were snarling at the crocs that were still in the water. I was so worried that they might have actually got bitten but luckily they were fine. Once she caught her breath Amanda told us that they had only seen these lions cross the river a few times, and never when the water was so high, and also never with crocs around! And sadly Owen didn’t make it and they weren’t able to film it!!!





Ok, last (for now) crazy lion sighting! Right after seeing that crossing, we drove past a lioness that was digging up what looked like a warthog mound. Now, if we see something cool out in the Mara our boss fully supports us staying to watch, even if it isn’t hyena related. So we sat and watched the lioness dig for around 45 minutes (a tourist car wandered by in that time, stayed for maybe 15 minutes, and then left when nothing was happening… stupid, impatient tourists, their loss!). Then suddenly she dove completely into the mound! We could only see maybe a foot and a half of her tail is visible whipping around in the air! Then she heaves backwards with A BABY WARTHOG IN HER JAWS.











So she kills the pig and carries her prize away to the bushes to eat it in peace, and here’s the really sad part. A little set of ears pops out of the den, and then this poor little pig sticks its head out of the hole and looks around, looking really sad and lost. Then it jumps and runs into the grass, probably wondering where its brother or sister went. We felt so badly for the poor little guy ;_;

So yeah, crazy amazing lion sightings, though I would trade one or two of them for crazy amazing hyena sightings! I <3 my hyenas so much! Next post will be all about them, I promise!

Enjoy the pictures everyone!