Lion in the rain - Kenya, November 2022

[Atravelynn]

Yep, the videos all work with nice audio, demonstrating what a good day it was.  The B&Ws, the backlit birds, dusty zebra make for great photos.  Maybe you've been inducted into the world of bird photography now, not just when other subjects are scarce.

[Towlersonsafari]

i really love the guineafowl photos and there are few things more fun that watching ellies in the water @Zubbie15( also i have never had a G-and T either)

[Wild Dogger]

Phantastic pictures.
Really great!

 

[ElenaH]

@Zubbie15, amazing photos! I also looked at your videos! Very pleasing, a lot of cuteness! Ellies are like kids 

Somehow I didn't get what is G&T?

Waiting impatiently to read the next chapters :-)

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Atravelynn, @Towlersonsafari, @Wild Dogger and @ElenaH for the kind comments, and everyone else for the likes.

 

21 hours ago, Atravelynn said:

Yep, the videos all work with nice audio, demonstrating what a good day it was.  The B&Ws, the backlit birds, dusty zebra make for great photos.  Maybe you've been inducted into the world of bird photography now, not just when other subjects are scarce.

At home, I almost exclusively photograph birds (when possible - it's often hard to find the time to get out).  It's just when we're on safari, we never seem to take a lot of bird photos, we're too focused on the larger animals.  There will be a few more bird photos that show up in this report, but not too many.  The Mara was really quite quiet in terms of birdlife, at least for casual birders like us.

 

52 minutes ago, ElenaH said:

Somehow I didn't get what is G&T?

Haha, sorry - Gin and tonic.  

 

Time for our last afternoon drive at LWC, and our last drive overall with Albie as he needed to be back at Sosian to greet new guests the next morning.  It was last realistic chance to see the wild dogs on this trip, so we headed off with the radio and scanned every time we got onto any type of elevated position.  Well, no need to beat around the bush, we didn't have any success, and we didn't even get any faint beeps either, so they weren't in the area.  We were so focused on the dogs, that we literally didn't take any photos the entire afternoon.  

 

Once we decided it was fruitless, we headed off for our sundowners near the river.  Looking for a spot, we found a small herd of elephants playing in the river and along the banks.  It was such a peaceful location, and really a nice consolation for missing the dogs.  

 

Elephant in the river, as the sun set in the background

 

Companion photo to one I posted at the start of this report.  The sun backlighting the dust was really special. 

 

There were a couple of really large males hanging around the herd looking for receptive females.  

 

So we had some disappointment, but headed off for our last night drive and one of our most unique sightings of the trip.

[Athene]

lovely pictures throughout@Zubbie15especially I like your elephants

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Athene!

 

So I have skipped over the night game drives, partly because with the messed up camera clocks it is hard to remember what happened on which night, and because all night drives basically revolved around one animal.  I imagine some of you know who this is, especially if you follow LWC on Facebook...

 

Our first evening, we had sundowners by the river, and then Albie and Francis said let's start scanning, slowly, for the black leopard that hangs out around the camp.  Not 5 minutes later, as we're going along, we see a dark shadow on the opposite river bank, which slowly resolves itself into our target.  I believe she is known as Giza, she's a young leopard who was born and grew up right in the area.  

 

About to cross the river

 

Here she comes

 

We were fortunate to be the only ones in the area at this point, and she came up the bank right in front of us.

 

Coming up right in front of us

 

We spent time with her 3 of the 4 night drives, and the only night we didn't see her was one night where we decided to return to camp a little early (she was found about 15 minutes later).  Obviously she was a big draw, but the guides were pretty good at only having 2 cars near her at any one time, with any other cars pulling back, and then switching occurring after a few minutes.  But we would have great views of her, she clearly was accustomed to the vehicles (and as I'll describe in my next post actually sought them out).  

 

A brief glance

 

She would come quite close at times, with no fear or concern

 

In the right light, you could clearly see that she still had spots, they were just mostly hidden by the melanistic coat

 

A shadow in the night

 

Giza had learned to hunt this area from her mother, and in fact one night both of them were hunting with ~50 meters of each other.  In fact, at one point we could point the spotlight in one direction and see her, and then move it 180 degrees and see her mom.  They didn't really acknowledge each other while we were around.  There is also a large male leopard in the area; the guides told us he often follows the females and steals their kills, which meant they would typically need to kill 2-3 dik-diks per evening to get enough food.  Amazingly, as mentioned before, it didn't seem to impact the dik-dik population in the least. 

 

Mom also patrolling the area

[madaboutcheetah]

Simply brilliant !!!!

[Zubbie15]

2 hours ago, madaboutcheetah said:

Simply brilliant !!!!

Thanks!

 

So, why does Giza like to come around camp?  Well, a few times the guides would turn off all of the spotlights, and even with our not fully adjusted, overall poor night vision you could see a dark shadow moving across the landscape (and we were there just before the new moon - it would have been much easier to see her with a full moon). So, clearly, if human eyes can see her then for any animal with better night vision she would have no hope.  We did have a long conversation at one meal with Albie, Dan and some of the other guides and guests, and they all said the goal was to not provide her any advantage, and to not provide her prey with any disadvantage. But, at the same time, we saw multiple occasions where she ended up like this:

 

Trying to sneak up on a pair of dik-diks

 

You can see it in this not particularly good vided here too (same sighting):  

 

 

(Hmmm, I wonder why this one embedded and the others didn't, very odd!).

 

I would certainly say that the argument could be strongly made that she was trying to hide in the headlights.  In the situation above, she actually failed on her hunt, but on the last night we saw her take down a dik-dik right in front of us:

 

Caught it. To be fair, she wasn't as in the headlights as the photos above, this was only after she had made the kill

 

She took it up into a tree and started to eat it:

 

Hide the food before anyone comes to steal it

 

That was the last we saw of her - the guides figured she would be in the tree eating for at least a couple of hours, and while we did discuss it we ultimately decided not to go out again after dinner.

 

One thing to mention - camp also has a separate night drive area that they go to, it's further away (all the Giza activity happened within ~500m of camp), so it seems guests usually go out for bush dinner, but they claim it is good for a lot of cool animals (aadvark, aardwolf, serval, striped hyena, etc).  I think if we had been there for 1 more night, or if it hadn't been our first stop with the related jetlag fatigue, I definitely would have liked to have given that a try as well.

 

Finally, while we were there we really hoped to see her in the daytime, but while we were there she was strictly nocturnal. No one saw her before the sunset, and she was always gone before sunrise.  I'm not sure if that has changed, but Federico Veronesi has posted recently a couple of photos of her in daylight.  So maybe she will be more visible in the future, or maybe that was just a lucky sighting!

 

[Towlersonsafari]

Wow! @Zubbie15

[Bush dog]

Wow, those pictures of the black leopard and some of the elephants!!!  It really is great art. Congratulations!

[AKR1]

This report is getting better and better. Had no idea of the black leopard at LWC ( normally associate the black leopard/ panther with Kabini in India) !  Waiting for Enaidura and the Mara! 

Edited January 22, 2023 by AKR1

[michael-ibk]

Incredible! Your photography is really spectacularly beautiful. And the "Black Panther" is just insanely cool - what a wonderful animal.

[Athene]

What a unique experience to see a black leopard, beautiful photos @Zubbie15

[Caracal]

Spectacular @Zubbie15

[janzin]

wow wow wow! I had no idea there was a black leopard in Kenya, I believe I'd read about one in the Serengeti somewhere.  Amazing sightings and photos!! Very jealous   Keeping my fingers crossed we'll see the Kabini black leopard next month but this one seems a lot more reliable!

 

[Biko]

Thanks for the incredible pictures and information about the black leopard. 

 

Somewhere in your report you wrote about the pack of wild dogs, that it is quite small. Did you hear what happened to the large pack that was in the area a couple of years ago? Has it just split up and dispersed, or have dogs died because of deseases born by the domestic dogs that come with the herds of the pastoralists that are forced to go further South because of the droughts?

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Towlersonsafari, @Bush dog, @AKR1, @michael-ibk, @Athene, @Caracal, @janzin and @Biko!

 

On 1/22/2023 at 8:24 PM, janzin said:

wow wow wow! I had no idea there was a black leopard in Kenya, I believe I'd read about one in the Serengeti somewhere.  Amazing sightings and photos!! Very jealous   Keeping my fingers crossed we'll see the Kabini black leopard next month but this one seems a lot more reliable!

 

We had a discussion about black leopards, I recall the guides saying there were 8 known ones, but not if that was in Laikipia or in all of Africa.  I do remember that they said there was another black leopard who's territory was on LWC land, but that it was very shy and almost never seen.  And that on a nearby property there was a large male black leopard that people saw 1-2 times per month.  That general area of Kenya seems to be good for melanistic/darker coat colors, apparently they often see black genets, and for sure the local waterbuck subspecies is much darker than any other I've seen previously.

 

On 1/23/2023 at 5:06 AM, Biko said:

Thanks for the incredible pictures and information about the black leopard. 

 

Somewhere in your report you wrote about the pack of wild dogs, that it is quite small. Did you hear what happened to the large pack that was in the area a couple of years ago? Has it just split up and dispersed, or have dogs died because of deseases born by the domestic dogs that come with the herds of the pastoralists that are forced to go further South because of the droughts?

We were told that when the pastoralist incursion happened  (2017 or 2018, I believe), they brought their dogs, and the dogs brought domestic dog diseases.  That wiped out all of the dogs except for this one small group, and this pack is surviving but not thriving.  Last denning season they only had 2 pups, which really isn't a lot given the rates of mortality.  I'm not sure if or when some outside dogs might come back to recolonize the area, but right now the situation isn't particularly great.

 

Alright, last morning at Laikipia Wilderness.  We had a different driver since Albie had left (I cannot remember his name, but definitely a good guy), and were offered the chance to either laze around camp until needing to leave for our flight (which was scheduled for 11:30), or go on a small game drive.  We of course took the drive option.    It was interesting being with a different guide; we really appreciated Albie, but somewhat like @Wild Dogger has described in his report, we did sometimes bypass animals based on the photographic possibilities.  We're not new to safari anymore, but sometimes it is nice to just stop for a couple of minutes.  That's what we did on this drive.  The focus was riding along the river, and then slowly making our way toward the airstrip, stopping for whatever we might see.

 

Goliath Heron - he didn't seem to appreciate our company.

 

Reticulated Giraffe.  They were quite common, but very shy.  All we typically saw was giraffe butts walking away from us, so this was a rare treat.

 

Baboon, found in the aptly named baboon rocks area.

 

We spent a while watching a pair of young elephants playing together, which made for a good day.

 

Face-off

 

Leaving the valley, we rose up onto the plateau and realized just how open parts of the area are.  I'm not sure how much we were really allowed to stop in this area, we did occasionally but it seemed to be that after a minute our guide was eager to move on.  However, we got to see our first and only Beisa Oryx of the trip (no photos, I screwed up the focusing), and we saw our only generuk:

 

Mom and baby Gerenuk - record shot, nothing more.

 

It was pretty hot and sunny by this time (if we'd known how the coming days would be, we would have appreciated that a bit more!), so not much was going on in terms of wildlife.   So we made our way to the airstrip, and soon were flying off to the Mara.

 

 

[Zubbie15]

We arrived in the Mara after a reasonably bumpy ride. One cool thing was that because we were the last ones to be picked up, we ended up being the last ones to be dropped off, so it was like having a mini-private plane.  What can I say, it doesn't take much to make me happy!  Landing, I got off the plane and looked around for Ping - he's obviously well-known here, and so I had a pretty good idea of what he looked like, but there really didn't seem to be anyone there at all.  The pilot went off to see if someone was there for us, and came back shortly and said there wasn't, but they would be there soon.  So we went and hung out with the rangers for a bit, before a safari truck came rushing up with Ping in the front.  It turned out he had been there, only for someone to tell him we were going to land at a different airstrip.  So he started heading there, before getting a call that he actually needed to be back at the first location!  I was glad he was there, I'll admit to having started wondering what we'd do if he never showed up.  

 

We headed off to Enaidura, where it turned out we would be the only guests for the first 4 nights.  So not only a private flight to the airstrip, but a private camp in the Mara!  There was a lot of staff for little old us, all of whom were awesome.  I don't remember the name of the manager (ugh), but one young lady, Maureen, was great as well. Ping said, although I'm not sure if it was a joke, that he was going to turn her into a guide sometime soon.   Sitting down for lunch, Ping told us that today he would take it easy on us, and we'd just do a relaxed afternoon drive, but to be ready because the next three days we would be working hard.  I had been warned by @janzin that he really made his guests work... and it was definitely true!

 

After getting settled, we headed off on a drive - it had gotten quite dark and cloudy, and not much was about.  We ended up (I'm sure this was Ping's destination all along) at a hyena den right by the road.  Given their location, they were surprisingly shy, with most of them running off when we pulled up.  They did have some really young pups in the den, but we could only get small glimpses of them, and no photos. But there were some other young ones around that were fairly relaxed.

 

staying together for comfort

 

There was an adult around too, to keep an eye on them.

 

Coming back to the den

 

This one had a damaged lip, it was quite distinctive. You can see a few rain drops in this image, a storm had started to roll in. 

 

We left the hyenas to start heading back, with a quick stop for this Tommy by the road.  You can see that the light was almost gone by this point, very thick, dark clouds were overhead.

 

Tommy portrait

 

Approaching camp, a pride of lions (Rekero, I think?) had taken down a buffalo nearby the day before, and Ping was sure we'd see them (in fact they were pretty consistently in the same area the entire time of our stay).  They were doing what lions typically do, just lying around with full stomachs.  

 

Note the heavy clouds - but there is a break to let in some sunlight.  Which would win out for tomorrow?

 

Slightly off from the rest of the group was this large male - I'll have a funny story about him for the next day.  @Wild Dogger talked in his report about the noise levels in the R5, I'm curious if anyone wants to guess what ISO was used for the shot below?  I wouldn't use it for printing anything large, but to me at internet size it's more than acceptable. 

 

Sleepy lion

 

We had a really good meal (the only issue - all the rain meant a ton of termites were flying around, it was hard to keep them out of food and drinks.  Apparently they taste like peanut butter, but I couldn't bring myself to eat one).  Our night was punctuated by regular roaring from the lions, which is always an enjoyable way to drift off.

 

 

[janzin]

Looking forward to hearing about your time with Ping!  I really think he is training Maureen to be a guide. He is very eager to train women guides.  Brian is the camp manager...and the bartender!

 

EXIF says that lion is ISO 40,000!! That's pretty amazing, did you do any noise reduction?

 

[Zubbie15]

2 hours ago, janzin said:

Looking forward to hearing about your time with Ping!  I really think he is training Maureen to be a guide. He is very eager to train women guides.  Brian is the camp manager...and the bartender!

 

EXIF says that lion is ISO 40,000!! That's pretty amazing, did you do any noise reduction?

 

 

We had a really good time with Ping, there were a couple of hiccups but we'll get to that.   Thanks for reminding me it was Brian, he was such a nice guy.  Although I think Maureen's G&Ts were better than his...   

 

The only reason I'm not sure about Maureen being trained as a guide is that they shared a look when he said it, clearly there was some backstory we didn't know about (and didn't feel we could ask).  But whatever she does I think she's going to go far.

 

Not sure checking the EXIF data counts as guessing, does it?    After a lot of research during Covid times, the best process I've come up with for low light photos is as follows:  1) expose to the right (even though that actually further increases the ISO value); 2) run the RAW file through DxO PureRaw2 after import to generate a DNG file; 3) use Topaz DeNoise selectively, especially in out of focus areas, to reduce noise.  Clearly the detail isn't as good as if you are at low ISO, but considering my first dSLR was barely usable at ISO 800 there has been a massive improvement in a relatively short timeframe!

[Zubbie15]

Since the first day was the only time we spent appreciable time in camp during daylight, I might as well deal with that now.  @janzin has done a review of the camp, and although that was from when it was a mobile camp I would say the spirit remains similar:  

 

 

Our old friend @amybatt also wrote a bit about Enaidura in her trip report (there are other mentions of the camp on ST as well):

 

I'll take this opportunity to thank Janet and Amy for their help answering my questions as were booking this safari, both were really great sources of info.

 

Arriving in camp, you come to a small parking area, and then you walk through a path in some bushes to get to the mess area. 

 

Main tent

 

The camp is set up stretched out along the bank of the Talek River,  in the photo above the river is to the right.  There weren't any hippos below, but definitely lots of signs of crocodiles and several very noisy Egyptian Geese hanging around.  We also saw the resident bushbuck briefly, but not well.

 

Our tent was the first one beside the mess tent, which had the advantage that we could just get the WiFi signal at times (technically there is only WiFi in the main tent).  

 

From entrance to the tent

 

The tent had 2 charging bars, which was great, and 24 hours solar energy.  Behind the bed was a nice addition, a little storage area for all of our stuff.

 

Storage in tent

 

I don't have a photo of the bathroom, it was a pretty standard safari tent bathroom except they had a modified shower head, such that even though it was a bucket shower you could keep the water running the whole time and not run out.  That's always been my challenge with bucket showers, on colder evenings it can get chilly after you get wet and while you're soaping up!

 

Askari at the entrance to camp

 

The food at camp was excellent, but there was a lot!  Typically what would happen would be there would be toast and jam ready for us when we left the tent in the dark; then we would take a packed breakfast that we would eat around 10AM.  Ping's philosophy is that guests shouldn't have to eat two packed meals in a day, so since we were out for full day drives every day he would call camp and they would come out and deliver us hot food for lunchtime (typically around 2PM).

 

Food delivery in the Mara.

 

Finally, dinner would then be around 7:30 at night, before repeating the next day.  So we were eating 4 meals a day, while just sitting on our behinds the entire time.  I kept wanting to say no, but the food was just so good it wasn't possible!

 

I never put photos of myself online, but here's one with me, Brian, Maureen and Ping.  

 

 

All-in-all, it may not be the fanciest camp, but I really couldn't find fault in anything they offer.   Great people, excellent food, comfortable bed, and surrounded by wildlife - what more can you ask for? 

Edited January 24, 2023 by Zubbie15

[Atravelynn]

Black leopard and your shots of it leave me speechless/wordless.

[Zubbie15]

13 hours ago, Atravelynn said:

leave me speechless/wordless.

Thanks Lynn - I didn't think that was possible! 

 

The next morning we were out early, I know it's becoming a bit of a cliche but one goal I had for was to try to get the silhouette shots against the sunrise/sunset sky.  This morning was the only real option we ended up having for this type of shot - the next time the sun showed up at sunrise for us was our last morning at Naboisho!  We didn't find any subjects right at sunrise, but shortly after an ostrich in good position showed up.

 

Ostrich silhouette

 

It didn't take long for the clouds to appear, but they weren't completely covering the sky and in fact the color of the sky was rather unique.  Our goal today was to try to find some lions - Ping (and all the other guides, to be honest) knew of a leopard with cubs (Luluka), but he suggested that we wait until the next day to try for her.  The reason? The next day was a Sunday, and he was hopeful that the warden would be at church rather than chasing people away for the leopard.  I think he was partially joking, but the warden/rangers had closed an area near the cubs' hiding place recently.  

 

Elephants and a hot air balloon

 

The eye of a giant

 

Once we left the elephants, we came across a mother jackal and her two puppies.  They were fun to observe, and were nice to us in posing on top of a termite mound.

 

Jackal puppy

 

Siblings on a termite mound.  I really like this picture, and was told a couple of days ago that NANPA (the North American Nature Photographers Association)

is going to be featuring it on their Instagram page today

 

Mom

 

Once they disappeared, we continued along.  The sky was still a pretty odd orange color despite the fact the sun was higher in the sky - they had been doing a lot of controlled burning in the area, which contributed some smoke.  This was because the wildebeest hadn't come in the normal numbers in previous months, and a lot of grasses that would normally had been eaten were there, dry, and inhibiting the growth of new shoots.  So we stopped further to get some more silhouette shots.

 

Tommy against a hazy sky

 

Warthog silhouette

 

This was quite fun, we were just sitting there as various animals paraded by. However, Ping was pretty adamant at one point that we needed to move right away, there was something better waiting for us!

[Wild Dogger]

19 hours ago, Zubbie15 said:

expose to the right (even though that actually further increases the ISO value)

This seems to me the key when shooting at high ISOs. Expose as much to the right as you can without burning whites in important parts.