Predator sightings over the past few weeks have been quite remarkable. We have been fortunate to see predators almost daily. We recently had one of the most amazing single day of predator sightings in Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. We left camp at 5:30 am and at 6:10 am, bumped into 11 wild dogs on the main road. They were full and appeared to have just made a kill in some bushes nearby. Close to them was a spotted hyena who was running in and out of the thick bushes. The wild dogs moved off quickly before I was able to take any ID photos.
We continued on our drive and entered Buffalo Springs. We bumped into a cheetah and her 2 cubs at about 7:30 am. I hadn’t seen this particular cheetah in a long time – she was radio-collared by Action for Cheetahs Kenya – and had gone missing for months only to return with 4 cubs (1 was killed by a lion and another disappeared). It was great to see her and her two little cubs. They were curious about us and climbed a small tree near us. It was a fantastic cheetah sighting. We left the cheetahs and made our way to the eastern sector of Buffalo Springs Reserve.
As we drove along the main road, we bumped into 2 honey badgers which I don’t normally see often. Soon after that, we spotted some lions in the distance. We came across 5 members of the Ngare Mara Pride feasting on an oryx that had just been killed a few moments ago. We stayed with the lions for a while watching them rip apart the oryx. We left them at about 9:30 am and drove towards the Ngare Mara Gate where we saw 2 more lions! Lguret, our maneless male, mating with a female from Ngare Mara. It was amazing that between 6 am and 10 am, we had seen 11 wild dogs, 1 hyena, 3 cheetahs, 2 honey badgers and 7 lions!
It got better! The following day, we saw more lions, another cheetah and a fantastic sighting of an aardwolf for more than 10 minutes. It is a great time to visit Samburu and Buffalo Springs at the moment – predators are literally everywhere.
