Mother Cheetah in the Serengeti

This mother cheetah is doing a great job raising her three cubs in the Serengeti. I was fortunate enough to be there last month and we found these four on an early morning game drive. We returned to the same area later in the day to see whether she had been successful in hunting down some food for the family.

Cheetah are becoming comparatively rare now. When I lived in Kenya about 40 years ago, you could be reasonably confident of seeing them on any trip to the game reserve, and often in any open country. That has clearly changed and we saw more leopard on this trip than we saw cheetah, which really blew me away!

I have plenty more photos of this little family to share!

Cheetah watch approaching storm in the Serengeti

An afternoon storm approaches as these cheetah relax after feeding on a Thompson's gazelle. Mum is a fairly small cheetah doing a great job of feeding and raising three cubs on her own in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Whitefella Walkabout
Tanzania, East Africa

An impressive young lion

A good looking fellow in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. He sat atop this mound which gave him a view across the plains. A little way from him, in amongst the grass, was a single lioness, perhaps the beginnings of his own pride.

Magnificent now and will be very impressive once he is a little older.

He was trying to snooze, which is what they do most of the day, but we didn't disturb him for very long.

Impressive black-maned lion in the Serengeti

We saw a large pride of lions early one morning as we were driving around the area which the guides have nicknamed "Rock City". There were several lionesses in the pride as well as cubs and younger lions of various ages. Our guides, Michael and Jololo, had told us that most of the big male lions were presently living on the Kenyan side of the Mara river, but they thought that there was one big, black-maned lion around, and a few immature lions that had been pushed out of their prides. Indeed we saw a beautiful immature lion the previous day which Michael and Gerard said was very promising for the future, as so many had been lost to poachers.

On this morning we were lucky, but perhaps it was more skill than luck, because Jololo seemed to know where they lived and where they preferred to lie up during the day. In any case he spotted the pride from about 500 metres away, seemingly draped over the top of a rock, but hidden under the shade of the overhanging bushes, and fairly high up in this particular outcrop.

Michael stopped so we could take in the first part of this scene and then slowly drove up between some of the rocks. There we saw this big male, tucked between the boulders so he had a view in various directions but was keeping himself largely obscured. This behaviour is almost certainly one of the reasons why he has lived so long. Closer inspection of some of my photos shows that he has many scars around his head, presumably the consequences of his battles to retain such a large family. We estimated that there were at least fifteen in this pride.

Pretty Cheetah Family in the Serengeti.

A beautiful mother cheetah and three cubs in the northern Serengeti. We returned later that day to see what they were up to and found them about two kilometres away feeding on a Thompson's Gazelle … their favourite. I will post some of these photos soon! The mother is not very large and she is doing a fabulous job feeding and tending to three cubs!