Lion Guardians

Category: Lion Guardian reports, Meet the lions | Date: Sep 30 2009 | By: lionguardians

A few days ago Lion Guardian Pilenanka came across a zebra that had been killed by lions not far from camp. We went down to see the carcass, and found that not very much had been eaten, and realised the lions would probably come back to the kill that night. We decided this was the perfect opportunity to put up the camera trap, and see whether the lions came back to their kill!

We carefully set up the trap by a nearby tree, and left it overnight to see who arrived at the scene of the kill. When we came back to the site the next day we found the trap had been opened up and was hanging off the tree, and covered in hairs, bite marks, blood and saliva!

The camera was switched off, and we feared that it had been completely destroyed, by what looked from the tracks to be a huge male lion!

We rushed back to camp to see whether the camera had been able to take any photos before it was attacked. It was then that we found out who the culprit was - our collared male lion Kesayou!

Unfortunately he was on the wrong side of the zebra to get a very good photo, but we have got 2, which we can recognise him from. Kesayou is extremely camera shy, and obviously did not want to be photographed while eating the zebra!

Luckily the camera still works, and once it is cleaned up it should be perfectly fine again. Next time we will have to put the trap out of his reach!!

Tags: camera, camera trap, Kenya, lion, lion attack, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

6 responses so far

Category: life in camp | Date: Sep 20 2009 | By: lionguardians

Here are the latest pictures from the camera trap we were kindly donated by Sheri and Owen Hogle from the Wild Bird Center in Utah. It was put at a water hole so that we could see what animals were visiting the area. Here are some of the animals that came:

Some very inquisitive giraffes…..

a number of elephants…..

and an oryx!

We still have not been able to capture any lions on the camera, but Lion Guardian Kapande reported seeing fresh tracks of a male lion this morning, so we are hoping to find this individual soon!

Tags: camera trap, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

2 responses so far

Category: Donations received, life in camp | Date: Jul 30 2009 | By: lionguardians

In April we were very kindly donated a Wingscapes bird camera trap by Sheri and Owen Hogle from the Wild Bird Center in Utah, which gave us some wonderful photos of birds during the day. But we were even more excited when they told us they were also sending a Bushnell Trail Sentry camera trap which can be used at night! This means we can also see what carnivores are out here, and hopefully try and identify some lions.

To get started we put the camera up 5 minutes walk from our camp, and tied up some bait that we had earlier got to use with lions. We got some amazing results! Here are some of the highlights of our first three nights with the camera trap up.

Spotted hyenas were our most common visitor, with over 200 photos of them over the three nights!

We also had visits from black-backed jackals…

a white-tailed mongoose….

an elephant….

and even a serval cat, which came back two nights in a row!

Our photos on the third night were finally put to an end when an inquisitive animal covered the lens in a rather dirty mess! Unfortunately the camera didn’t pick up the culprit but we are guessing it was a spotted hyena!

This has now been cleaned off, ready for another night of investigations! Now that we have a better understanding of the camera we are going to put it up near to some fresh lion tracks, or hopefully a fresh lion kill, to try to get some photos of lions. We’ll keep you posted with all our results from the camera trap. Thank you once again Sheri and Owen!

Tags: camera, camera trap, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

3 responses so far

Category: Donations received | Date: Apr 24 2009 | By: lionguardians

Today we were very pleased to receive a great gift from our blog readers Sheri and Owen from the Wild Bird Center in Utah, who have donated a digital camera and a camera trap to the Lion Guardians!

Here is the first photo taken with our new camera, of two bird’s nests in our camp.

And here is the camera trap in action! We have set it up on the ground to try and get our first shots of birds, before we progress to trying for lions! We’ll show you the results soon!

We would also like to thank Anne C for sponsoring Lion Guardian Koikai, who is extremely excited and pleased with this fantastic news.

Thank you from all of us here in Kenya.

Tags: camera, camera trap, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

6 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports, ways you can help | Date: Mar 13 2009 | By: lionguardians

The search for Nemasi’s cubs continues…… Just by the edge of the thick lava forest we found a young eland that had been killed the previous day by what looked like young lions (from the tracks). We were very excited!

But as we had no luck seeing the very secretive lions previously we decided to ask our neighbours Ol Donyo Wuas lodge whether we could borrow their camera traps, so we could put them up by the eland to see if the cubs came back at night. That way we would not disturb them from their food, and would be able to see how many cubs there were.

We went back to the eland carcass at early evening and set up the traps.

Then we waited! When we came back the next day we could see elephant tracks but did not notice any fresh lion tracks. When we got back to camp we immediately ran to the computer to have a look at the photos. And look at what we found! Sadly, still no lion cubs but instead we got some great photos of a beautiful leopard! Hope you like them!

What do you think is happening here? Did the leopard fall over? Was it just relaxing next to the eland carcass?

Aren’t the photos great? It is not often we see leopards here so we were very happy to see this healthy looking animal. We have now had to give the camera trap back to the lodge, so if anyone can donate a camera trap to us we would be extremely grateful - and would be able to bring you more photos like these!

We are also in need of a digital camera as the Lion Guardians camera recently broke, and we are relying on borrowing a digital camera to take all the photos you see on the blog. If you know anyone who has a spare digital camera or camera trap please write us a comment and I will tell you how you could get these items to us. Or if you could help us by donating some money to go towards either of these items we would be very grateful too. Thank you!

Tags: camera trap, digital camera, Kenya, leopard, lion, lion conservation, lion cubs, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

4 responses so far