Many years ago I took a two week photographic safari to Kenya, Africa and visited a number of game parks including Aberdare, Meru, Samburu, Masai Mara, and Nairobi National Parks. We camped in some of the parks and stayed in motels or private ranches in others. As we visited the game parks, I was hoping to observe and photograph a lion kill. Most tourists visiting Africa never see such things and we have to rely on Animal Planet documentaries!
Well, on the last day of the safari I saw a lioness stalk and successfully pull down a male Grant?s gazelle in Nairobi National Park just miles from the bustling city! In fact you can see some of the tall buildings when traveling through this park and I have photos of animals with skyscrapers in the background! Lions kill usually by throttling whereby they strangle their prey with a throat hold or suffocate it with a bite across the muzzle. This lioness quickly choked the male gazelle to death. Larger prey animals take much longer to subdue. I took a series of photos of the kill and the lioness eating the prey. The picture in this posting shows the lioness with a firm throat hold on the very dead gazelle! In fact, he had succumbed earlier and she feasted on the viscera. But for some reason, she decided to administer another throat hold just in case! We were only about 30 feet away in an open land rover. Perhaps our presence triggered the throat holding behavior. When humans are in vehicles, you can drive right up to a pride of lions and they tend to ignore you. But you better NOT get out!
I would like to go back to Africa and visit Botswana which has some magnificent game reserves. However, Africa is changing and the huge growing human population is putting enormous pressure on the wildlife which continues to be pushed into game parks. Poaching continues to be a significant problem and greatly threatens numerous species like black rhinos.
So, the attached picture is something different and I hope folks enjoy this example of ?nature in the raw?! At least our purple martins aren?t faced with lion predation!
Steve
