After all our exciting meeting with lions and seeing the great migration and following the Mara River in a balloon only a few yards above ground, it is easy to forget all the other wonderful sightings we had during our days in Masai Mara. Here a couple of images of other predators.
First the Cheetah, found in Eastern and Southern Africa. With a maximum speed of over 90 km per hour, the cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world. It lives mainly in the savannah and dry forests and grassland. We spotted a couple of them, but I was only able to photograph them once and then lazily lying down to rest hidden in the grass and among the shrubs.
The serval is a wild cat, much smaller than the cheetahs and leopards but much larger than a normal domesticated cat. It stands around 60 cm high at the shoulders. In Masai Mara, it was very difficult to spot and even more difficult to follow. My first image below shows the serval in the savannah, and you can see how difficult it is to spot, although I have brightened the central part of the image, where the serval is running. The second image captured the serval running away from us and disappearing in the tall grass.
The jackal belongs to the same family as our domesticated dogs and the wolf. They are scavengers and here you can see one jackal enjoying the leftovers from what probably was a lion kill.
Jackals are nocturnal animals that can live alone or in a larger pack of jackals. They are scavengers following lions in order to get a piece of he leftovers, but as a pack they can also hunt antelopes.
The hyenas are other scavengers of the dog family, slightly larger than the jackals. My images (see the images underneath the jackal image below) show an hyena enjoying the remains of a giraffe that may have died of natural courses.
