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Chapter 4: The pride, and "the blood brothers"


John M.

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By mid to late 2002, the Selinda pride had recovered somewhat from its tragedy of 2000. We returned, mainly to see how the lions were faring. We were rewarded with some awesome sightings, not only of the lions but also the famous three cheetah brothers...aka "the three boys", or "the blood brothers".

There were few other travellers because of 9/11. As a result, we not only got our Selinda accommodation at half price, but also had the camp to ourselves for some of the time.

One morning, we found the carcass of an elephant which had apparently died during the night either of illness or old age. It was some hours before the pride turned up. The lions spent several days feeding on it... and sleeping off the gorging.Mealtime.jpg.fd2087bc8a3bb3cbccf2b1f87cc1aa33.jpg

 

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On our last morning at Selinda that year, we found the three brothers breakfasting on an impala not far from camp.

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2004 revealed the Selinda pride in decline again. A sad sighting: one of the lionesses was badly gored when she tried to take a buffalo. She took many days to die.

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But the three boys continued to roam their large territory. Here they are, cautiously summing up the situation before dashing across the Selinda spillway.

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By our next visit, in 2005, one of the cheetahs had died of snakebite.  We stayed in three camps, Selinda, Kwando Lagoon and Zibalianja, so we had sightings of the surviving pair in both Selinda and Kwando territories. 

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Really enjoying your safari history of the Selinda pride.

 

I feel very sad for that badly injured lioness.

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madaboutcheetah

John, Lovely to see the 3 boys through Yvonne's lens ....... Once again, my sincere condolences to you and your family.  I fondly remember meeting the both of you in Adelaide that time during the Cricket WC.  

 

I had regular sightings of the 3 boys from 2003 to my last sighting of them on New Year's day 2008 when the remaining 2 boys would make a kill at Twin Pools (I can't remember now if it was a reedbuck or young lechwe).  If memory serves me correctly, in mid 2008 the boys were attacked by another coalition of males in Selinda, killing one.  The last male then went onto live his last days in the Kings pool area of the WS concession.  

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Thanks for that info, Hari. Our sightings of the remaining two boys in 2005 were the last we knew of them.

Despite my dislike of sharing via third parties, I'm considering posting a link in the video section to footage of the three boys dashing across the spillway in 2004. I'll let this thread know when it's available.

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It makes sense to post the link (to the cheetahs crossing the spillway) in this topic rather than create a new topic in ST's video section, as the footage is brief and the subject very much belongs in this thread.  It was shot by one of our group with a small home video recorder. Enjoy... and see if you can spot the brief funny bit.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kt2vnukhhubllrb/Blood brothers.mp4?dl=0

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8 hours ago, John M. said:

and see if you can spot the brief funny bit.

It is funny indeed - the middle one sitting down and up again when it gets wet

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Indeed, Biko :)

This trio was always so entertaining, and educational, to watch. On our next trip, a year later, when there were only two of them, they killed two impala at nightfall. They settled down to feed on one impala, and left the other for the hyaenas which they knew were nearby. Very clever.

It never surprises me that Hari is so fond of cheetahs.

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@John M.Yes, cheetah are very interesting to observe. I saw a number of them in the Masaai Mara this February,and hope to see more if I go to Namiri Plains on one of my next trips to Tanzania.

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Holy Cats!  This also lets me know I need to find Chapters 1, 2, 3.

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46 minutes ago, Atravelynn said:

Holy Cats!  This also lets me know I need to find Chapters 1, 2, 3.

Hi, long time no see :)

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  • John M. changed the title to Chapter 4: The pride, and "the blood brothers"
  • 2 weeks later...

2004 wasn't all about the cheetah trio.  Leaving the Twin Pans area one day, we saw a sand snake slither across the track in front of the vehicle. It went under a low bush, and the guide stopped the car to allow us to watch it for a while. He obviously knew it was safe and didn't object when I asked if I could get out and try for a close-up photo. Slowly and carefully down on my stomach, with a macro lens on the camera, this was the pleasing result... I don't think I've ever been so grateful to an obliging wild creature.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

  Returning to Yvonne's lens. In 2004, we organised a group of 11 relatives and friends (even ex-partners!) so that we could fill Selinda camp and keep it to ourselves for a week. This meant we travelled in two vehicles, Yvonne in one and me in the other. 

  One result of this was an amusing side story. My car had the senior of the two guides, and one of our passengers was Yvonne's ex.  Much to her annoyance, he jokingly referred to her car as "the B team", and our car as "the A team".  She forgave but never forgot. 

  The other result was that our vehicles often didn't stay together, so for the only time in our Africa visits, Yvonne and I saw and photographed different things. Today, I found a photograph of a rock monitor which I had no idea she had seen all those years ago. It's not the finest image, but I have nothing like it.

 

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  Yvonne also had a talent for annoying elephants, whether they were matriarchs, bulls, or youngsters. She always photographed them, never sitting back to just watch.

 

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1807658422_Youngelephant_8659.jpg.2b53c1f7256a048734b96ddc5ee48d6a.jpg  

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  Back to 2002, when this chapter started:  Yvonne's photograph of Jade, Selinda's popular female cheetah.

 

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  We saw her in lovely late afternoon light, which I believe was  enhanced by smoke in the sky from bushfires.  We found her and her single cub again on the last morning of that trip.  Here's the cub, spying on us through the grass.

 

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As I mentioned before, 9/11 found safari camps struggling for customers in 2002.  This photograph, taken during a farewell morning break, shows Selinda camp's entire clientele (apart from me behind the camera) with guide Paul Moleseng on the last day of our trip.

 

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Edited by John M.
Replaced cropped image with original comp
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  • 2 months later...

Who needs an "Africa hit" between safaris?

 

We did... and this was one of them, at the Monarto Safari Park just outside Adelaide. it's more than 1500 hectares, good roaming space for herbivores and carnivores. Despite appearances, human interaction is kept to a minimum and only allowed with animals which have needed some hand-rearing. We weren't allowed to approach the cheetah face-on, but he still turned his head and licked my arm. Embarrassing breach of protocol!:(

 

CheetahYJ.jpg.007a62720a2e886cca0378e64af3ac12.jpg   

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  • 4 weeks later...

African landscapes captivated me. In 2004, I added a small medium format camera, a Fuji rangefinder GS645S Wide 60, and tripod to my gear to try to improve on previous efforts with 35mm cameras.  This image was taken at the end of a morning break on Selinda's floodplain Mowana island ("Mowana" meaning baobab) while standing on the trunk of a fallen baobab tree. I imagine the island is now surrounded by water, if not inundated. 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

   An unusual sighting... and possibly even more unusual, to take a photo, but one's enthusiasm for wildlife can be overpowering :D

 

86090092_Gutturaltoad0223.jpg.51b7ddec65dd2bc0457a0a4ee55f3da9.jpgGuttural toad 

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  • 2 weeks later...

   The news about Hollywood actor Bruce Willis prompted this post.  As has probably been mentioned elsewhere, the males of the Selinda pride coalition were named after action movie stars.  This is "Bruce", who moved away to the neighbouring Bridge pride. We only saw him on this one occasion in 2002.

 

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   I'm not a fan of names for wild animals (I didn't know which was which of the other Selinda males), but confess to using them for quick and easy ID: examples, Amber the leopard and Jade the cheetah at Selinda, and Mara leopards, Half-tail and Beauty.

 

 

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madaboutcheetah

Jade - I knew of her name only from conversations with you John ..... The guides on the other side in Kwando just referred her as "good hunter" back in the day.  RIP Jade - she was amazing

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  • 2 months later...

   Searching through old files (it feels like there's a lifetime of them, both mine and Yvonne's), I found a letter which causes me to resurrect this photo and reflect with some nostalgia how different it was to work with film: one of the three brothers, at breakfast near Selinda camp in 2002.  Taken with a Canon EOS 1n, 400/2.8 lens and 2x teleconverter, and Sensia 100 slide film.

 

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   I entered this and a couple of other slides in the Natural History Museum/BBC Wildlife Magazine competition in 2003. To do so, I had to mail the original slides to the U.K.  I had duplicates made for myself as a precaution. But the slides were returned to me, accompanied by a letter telling me that this shot had made the final round. Naturally, I was quite chuffed, as the letter advised me there had been more than 20,500 images entered from 60 countries.  

   I guess that since then, with the improvement and versatility of digital cameras, such competitions have had many more shots than that to assess every year. 

 

    

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   I was delighted recently to also find a copy of one of the best African wildlife documentaries I've seen: In Broad Daylight, filmed in the Selinda Reserve and produced in 1999 by the Wayne & Venessa Hinde/William Taylor team.  I've long thought we bought it on VHS at Selinda in 2002, but I've not been able to find that tape; instead, I unearthed a DVD which Yvonne must have dubbed years ago. 

 

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    Many African wildlife documentaries turn me off with their theatrics. This has a minimum of soundtrack music, relying on natural FX to complement a factual narrative.  The animals and their environment, beautifully filmed, make their own "music" and drama.  Also refreshingly, there's not a single talking head. I once saw a documentary in which a presenter in Kenya went on-camera to breathlessly describe to the lens how awesome it was to watch a lion roaring, while the real talent roared away in the background. Wow. 

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  • 1 month later...

   Two shots of the popular Selinda/Zibalianja leopard of the early 2000s, Amber. We first saw her on an unusually wet day in 2002, when she was sheltering from the rain and looking grumpy because a hyena had just stolen her kill.

   The next occasion was in 2004, when she was safely up a tree with her meal.

 

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Amberkill21014.jpg.f6bde1dc984d65fbed7adf8df1818d2a.jpg

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Congrats on the cheetah face covered in blood making the Natural History Museum/BBC Wildlife Magazine final round of competition.  It is a striking photo!

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Thanks Lynn. We were lucky. It was the last morning of that safari. If we'd left Selinda camp before sunup, we would gave gone in the wrong direction. But the guides, viewing from an elevated spot in the dawn light, saw a cloud of dust in the distance, so we set off in that direction. The three cheetah boys had taken an impala for breakfast!

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  • 3 weeks later...

   Because Yvonne and I had Selinda camp to ourselves for a couple of days in 2002, it was easy to concentrate on bird watching for a while. Our guide Paul seemed pleased when we suggested doing just that. 

   But we never neglected birds, even the unspectacular or insignificant ones, on any of our safaris. I've been surprised by how many bird photos there are in our Africa archives. Here's a very small selection:

 

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Grey lourie, aka Go Away Bird

 

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Giant eagle owl

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Ground hornbill

 

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Lilac-breasted roller

 

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Pearl-spotted owlet

 

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Red-billed firefinch

 

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Arrow-marked babbler

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

   Selinda 2002 gave me my third and Yvonne's first sightings of wild dogs, including the entire pack with pups at their den near Zibalianja camp. They mostly seemed oblivious of our presence, very relaxed except for one which presented me with a fine portrait.

 

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Wilddogdrinking0723.jpg.0232dbfe3c3b9a245a9a67fe4a85a871.jpg

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