A lion outside our tent

Our last 2 nights have been at Kirawira, a tented camp in the Grumeti section of the Serengeti.  We saw lots of lions in the area, all flush and fat with the abundance of their recent "kills".

Both nights at Kirawira, we heard the low rumble of a lion just outside our tent (up stairs from the ground, fortunately), lasting several hours each night.  A male lion (and females as well) can roar in anger, but they also have a call somewhere between a grunt and a hoot--hurrrooom--repeated over and over in slow motion.  They use that sound to call their pride or seek help.

Another visitor was a Cape Buffalo, who left his poo, as our guides say, at the foot of our stairs.  Both the lion and the buffalo can be very dangerous for humans, but usually ignore us, particularly when we are in our Land Cruisers.  The guards and the camp, however, insisted we leave all outside lights on all night in order to let them keep watch on the many animals that visit the camp at night.

Yesterday afternoon, we saw a leopard, very rare in this part of the park, eating an impala it had just killed.  The leopard saw us and dashed about 100 yards for a tall tree, climbed to a large V high up in the tree and peered at us from its safe perch.  We watched it for almost an hour as it turned around, stared at us and then dozed off, waiting patiently for us to leave.

In another rare opportunity, we saw the small Serval Cat, who took one look at our 3 trucks and disappeared (but his photo is below).