Safari Live - Day 222 | National Geographic

This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and carcasses. Viewer discretion is advised. This is why the inclusion of McBride is such a firm favorite. [Music] It just looks ready for a fight; this is still her territory.

Good afternoon and welcome to the fourteenth episode of Safari Lives, a highlights package of the week's goings-on from here on the western fringes of the great Kruger National Park and of course, up in the Maasai Mara in the Mara Triangle. My name is James Henry. On camera today we've got Sins or Kizer all the way from Kwazulu-Natal, and up in the Mara, we have the inimitable couple of Brent and Jamie Leo Smith, Patterson or Patterson Leo Smith. I'm not sure what they're known as anymore these days. They'll be keeping you updated with all the goings-on with Waffles and the Mara Warthogs, in the North Clan, and of course, all of the lion prides: the Sausage Tree Pride, the Ala Lola Pride, the Paradise Pride, and all the magnificent animals of the migration.

We are trying to head towards the character we haven't seen for some time, and that is the Avoca males. We did not see the Avoca males this week, but we did see quite a lot of leopards at Juma. It's been mostly a leopard week. As usual, Husana, our two-and-a-half-year-old prince, spent time close to camp, as he has done for the past two months, but he's starting to range much more widely now. He ate a duiker, possibly stolen from Tandi, south of our boundary two days ago. We've had limited time with Tangan, who killed an impala near the eastern boundary, had his prize pinched, and then disappeared into Torchwood. Tandi spent most of the week around Treehouse Dam, where we think she had a kill. Much of her time was occupied with calling for her accustomed otter, Columba. The princess's playful tracks were all we found of her.

On the lion front, we had a very special time with the humans on foot at Treehouse Dam one morning; their faces were covered in blood, but we failed to find their victim. [Music] Up north in the Mara Triangle, the Sausage Tree Pride hunted the herds, as did any self-respecting lion pride. The Ala Lola and Paradise prides included the North Clan, who continued to amaze with Waffles and her cubs. So, that's what we're going to be focusing on this afternoon. Don't worry, Brent and Jamie have not gone missing and not told you about it. Now I was just being relatively playful, I suppose, so please don't worry about that.

As always, you are the most important character in all of our safari life, so please talk to us using the hashtags #SafariLive on Twitter; otherwise, the chat stream on YouTube. The characters of which I spoke are the Avoca males. The Avoca males came down south yesterday—apparently not yesterday, this afternoon—and they killed a waterbuck somewhere around here. There is a great heap of vultures on a dead tree over there. Under it is quite possibly the carcass of a hapless waterbuck bull, and we'll go and see if we can't reunite with the Avoca males, which will be very exciting indeed.

While we head there, we are going to go back up to the Maasai Mara, where the predators are enjoying the smorgasbord of the migration. Brent Leo Smith, who uses words like 'smorgasbord' a lot, is waiting to greet you.

Welcome to the Masai Mara in Kenya, and as you can see, we have a slightly disturbing sight. There is blood all over the back legs of that poor zebra, and has obviously made it across the Mara River, but not without massive injury. Of course, that leaves it vulnerable to not only the North Clan but the Musketeers and the Paradise Pride. My name is Brent Leo Smith; I have Archy on camera with me, and I hope you're ready for this edition of Safari Live. As you can figure, since I'm with a wounded zebra, I must be quite close to the crossings, and indeed I am. There is a build-up of zebra at Main North; however, Archy and I think we know more than the others there, and we think they're going to cross at Main South.

Shame, poor zebra. Let's hope a predator does find it soon and puts it out of its misery. It is quite badly wounded, and I don't think that with that injury and the density of predators that we have here in the Maasai Mara, that that zebra will last too long. Of course, if you have any questions, #safariLIVE is the best way to get hold of us, and I'm just going to try to get you a view of the zebras we've been watching. One has to be quite clever when you're around the crossings because there's often a lot of vehicle build-up, especially since there haven't been many crossings this year.

But Archie is probably the crossing king, off to doing all the crossings with Taylor earlier this year, and Archy and I are in agreement that they're going to walk to Main North, they're going to have a squiz, and then I think, nah, nah, nah, nah, this is a bad idea, and then I come across down here at Main South. So hopefully, we don't get it wrong, but fortunately, if we do, we've got a long camera lens to compensate for our bad judgment. But we think the zebras are going to move from that particular point off Main North and come back. Yeah, well, let's show you the zebras quickly, and who knows, my favorite little friends, the banded mongoose family that sleep here at Main South, might come for a visit.

So, there we go. See how any pocket dillion's down here as well, but we can see the zebras waiting on the northern bank of the Mara River, and we're going to do some patience. As you can see, it doesn't look like they want to cross there. I think they're going to cross down here at Main South, and the problem with Main South is there are some seriously big crocodiles waiting there, and that's probably exactly what caught that poor little zebra.

There we go; there is the apex aquatic predator of the Maasai Mara. Now, it sounds like Jamie has already found the apex land predator of the Maasai Mara. Let's go have a look.

We are not far away from Brent at all, and we are not with the animal that we expected to be with her this afternoon, but that's just the way things go out here in the Maasai Mara and indeed the African wilderness in general. A very good afternoon to you all and welcome to this episode of Safari Lives. It's wonderful to have you onboard. Don't forget to send through your questions in the normal ways, and let me explain exactly what it is that is going on over here.

So these two boys—and until we can confirm exactly who they are, let's call them the Nomads—have burst onto the scene over the last few days. Brent had them chasing a male lion back south, and then they vanished for a few days. But during that whole event, Brent noticed that one of them was missing the tip of his tail, and quite a recent injury as well. We didn't see them for a few days, and in a way thought nothing of it, because they're still quite young and the Musketeers still dominate most of this area, the Scar the Lion that Brent was talking about earlier.

But then, on my way towards the North Clan's den site, lo and behold, who should be lying under a tree less than about a hundred yards or so from the den itself were the two boys. They are still less than about a hundred yards or so from the den now. This morning we encountered one very anxious-looking Waffles after she heard the sound of these males roaring. She kind of wanted to go to the den; she was looking in the direction of the den, but she didn't dare put herself or her babies at risk by approaching it.

What this means, their continued presence here, is that Waffles has not been back to her cubs the entire day. She went off and lay down in a natural plunge pool in a swampy bit of this area. I don't know; I suspect that she is probably still there, but I can't go and check because I don't know exactly where she is. So once again, patience always pays off. We're going to stick it out with these boys and keep checking back in on Waffles' den to see if she does get to feed her cubs tonight.

All these lions haven't eaten and neither have Waffles' cubs, but the Avocas certainly have. Yes, they have, and they're keeping these birds off their kill. I've just heard that apparently, it's not their kill and in the fine tradition of male lions all over the world, they have pilfered it from the Inka Huma Pride.

So the three Avoca males, who have taken this territory without so much as a scratch to their faces, now are taking kills from the Inka Huma Pride, who seem to be much more comfortably moving up north into the Avoca domain. As I have mentioned before, they spent quite a lot of time down south while Amber Eyes had her cubs because they were almost certainly sired by one of the Birmingham boys, and then she lost those two hyenas, and since then the pride has moved closer and closer into the ambit of the Avoca boys because they will most likely, in fact almost certainly, be the males that now dominate the Inka Huma Pride.

The pride clearly has not decided that they like the Avocas very much yet and have absconded after their meal was stolen from them. Now if you haven't met the Avoca boys before, well this is them, and from their looks, I'd say they're probably about four years old now, and pretty early on for them to have taken a territory.

And when I say they came in here and took a territory without so much as receiving a scratch to the face, I say that because their arrival here was beautifully timed. I don't think they did that on purpose; I think it was entirely lucky. But they arrived here just as the Birmingham boys, erstwhile owners of these lands, headed down south to fill up at Cheetah Plains on the Sand River, which was brought about by the demise of the merging Galago Coalition and said that Birmingham's moved south.

And these young—what I call them—hipsters, millennial hipsters moved in and, well, they haven't had to fight for their land at all. They've just kind of set up, started roaring, nobody came to chase them away, and so they thought, "Well, we'll just hang about and stay." They have been seen mating with a pride called the Talimarti pride, but as yet we are unaware of them trying to sire any cubs with the Inka Huma Pride, which of course are our favorite lions; they're the ones that we see the most often.

I agree, Ravinder, absolutely. So it's nice to have males back in the reserve; it's really great to have male lions back in the reserve, especially three chaps like this. Let's hope they hang around for a while; there's no reason they shouldn't. They're big and strong and young, and unless a coalition of, say, I don't know, six-year-olds comes into this area from, where? I don't know. They're in probably for a fairly long haul here.

And the other thing to say about this, of course, is that this was a waterbuck. And waterbucks are legendarily not eaten by lions; of course, that is nonsense. Here are some lions eating waterbuck. Brent Leo Smith has not managed to find any lions just yet; I've no doubt he will during the course of the next two hours. He has managed to find something else, though; this time, it's a bird. The birds just keep disappearing. There we go, a dark-capped bulle, at least it didn't leave us like the others that were here a little bit earlier.

Now the zebras have started moving away from Main North, so I think I will gamble by coming down to Main South—was it not a bad one? And also, we don't get to be surrounded by four hyenas, and I might go for a little wonder, though, and see if we can find some lions around yet. I'm keeping an eye on the wounded zebra—is it gone?

No, it was just over here—you see it? No, it's around this, and we haven't had a look now, but in the meantime, there's been some very interesting developments in the lion prides in the Mara this year. The migration has been late; there has been a lack of food up in the northern part, which has caused one of the prides of lions we got to know very, very well last year, the Olololo Pride, to head down south onto the Bern into what was the core of the Sausage Tree Pride territory.

Three members of the Olololo Pride seemed to have moved into what was traditionally Sausage Tree Pride territory, enjoying the short green grass of the Bern and taking advantage of the animals attracted to the area. They seemed very comfortable in their new surroundings, playing and grooming, and they are not going anywhere for now. Look at that absolute monster! It could even have been the one that was responsible for that nasty wound on the zebra. That is a very big croc, probably four meters in length and weighing six, seven hundred kilograms. Isn't that impressive?

What a massive animal! There's a smaller one coming downstream. The most productive crossing areas here in the deep water have the biggest crocodiles, and the big males will actually chase off other big males from these areas to ensure that they always get the best and biggest meals. All the ones getting up on the other side are not as big but still moving into the water. Can they sense that the zebras are coming? Dun, dun, dun! They're just absolutely fascinating creatures. I know crocodiles, a lot of people don't like them; they're considered quite evil and nasty, but they have regenerative qualities.

The oil and fat from a crocodile has been used traditionally to treat wounds and scars, and they actually do have really regenerative properties, that they can recover from injuries very quickly, and they can recover from the nastiest injuries possible, and they can do it quite quickly. It's almost incredible how fast they can. Oh, is that what I think it is? Archy on the opposite bank just below the cars; it is not what I thought it was, and it is a stick! Don't worry; we will leave that at that. I'll just keep quiet and pretend and not even tell you what I thought it was.

And it always pays to check. I said we were going to spend a little bit more time here at the river with the monsters of the Mara and see if the zebras decide to brave it before Last Light. In the meantime, James is with the new kings of the Northern Sabi Sands.

Well, yes, I suppose you might describe them as the new kings. I'm going to sneeze, everybody; I do apologize. Somebody's got my nose; I think it's some dust. Anyway, there are the new kings, eating away. Now, we haven't seen much in the way of lions this week. We did have one wonderful sighting of the Inka Humas, of course, on foot, and that was tremendously special.

Wild painted; is that your name? Wild painted, the Inka. Not think of him as the Evo has arrived apparently sometime this morning. This went down last night sometime, and the Evo has arrived to lift it from its erstwhile owners sometime during the course of this morning. You can see that they have been eating for some time, and you can tell that from the one that you—the one you can see at the back there—just from the way that he's obviously breathing so heavily. Yes, Joshua, we too have missed the Avoca boys and are very pleased to have them back with us here.

Then, of course, they're not the only predators out here, or meat-eaters, if we look around in the skies or the trees. There are a lot of vultures, and the closest vulture is a hooded vulture. You can see that they are well, if you can imagine the playground at school, and the little fellow who was always the butt of the jokes, always being beaten up by everyone else. And when the bullies set upon the slightly smaller boys, those slightly smaller boys were then set upon the really small boys.

That is what you're looking at there. The hooded vulture is the bottom end of vulture society, and although it might be sitting there thinking, "I'm quite brave sitting close to the lions," as soon as the lions depart, the big white-backed vultures all around are going to come in and chase away the hooded vulture. The hooded vultures have got that hooked small beak because it can take advantage of the bits of meat that the bigger-beaked white-backed vultures are unable to, but they will have to wait until the white backs are done.

We'll be very careful lest they get picked. Then, since all, just to the right of that, there is a fight-back vulture. You can actually see its right back, which is quite unusual; very nice. Now, I'm sure a lot of you who've never seen a picture of the back end of a white-backed vulture must be wondering why on earth they are called white-backed vultures. Well, that is why. You saw that fight back, and apparently that allows them to follow each other to kills; it reflects the sun very nicely. I think that's quite a good explanation for why it's there—I can't imagine another one.

Why she lets go back to the lions now? It's very nice to actually have them doing something. Yes, I suppose at some time we will give the Avoca boys names now. They don't have any names at the moment; I'm not sure what that waterbuck's name was. You can see his face now. He is obviously late, as they say in this part of the world. He's no longer with us. The Avocas, I suppose we'll probably name when we see them slightly more frequently at the moment. We talked about this before, didn't we? We decided we should name them after different varietals of avocados because, of course, Avoca is French for avocado, and I think we came up with some wonderful varietals: ones that I had never heard of before.

That's right—Pinkleton, Hass, Pinkerton Hass, and I'm not sure what the other one was. There was an almost shutdown of the Twitter servers when we suggested this, because people were deeply distressed that we were thinking about naming lions after avocado varietals, and that, of course, caused those who were suggesting it to tease those who didn't like it even further, causing a further meltdown of the internet. Pinkerton, guacamole, and Hass, I think is what we decided.

Don't worry, there are not official names; everybody will no doubt give them local names, locally relevant names at some stage. Now Jamie had a very interesting situation this morning where Waffles' cubs were being all certainly heard inside, being investigated by two interloping male lions. Let's go and find out what they're doing now.

I did indeed, and I'm really hoping that for my last drive in the Mara, we get to see Waffles and her cubs before it's time for me to head back into camp. James, as usual, displaying his enormous lea, and what we normally—I mean, when it comes to naming animals, I think we'll have to keep him well away from these two boys, what do you think, boys? Lest he cause more disruption on the internet, I think we'll wait just a little bit longer to see if we can figure out exactly where it is these boys come from, who they are, and what exactly their background is, and that could take quite a while. They’re quite distinctive boys, though; we can't really count the missing tail tip because that's a really recent injury, but the nicks out of their ears and their whisker spots are very clear.

Hopefully, we should be able to figure out. Okay, wait—I don't want to—sorry, Kirst, I don't want to. I didn't quite hear you, but I think what I'm going to have to do is send you back across to Juma because something interesting is playing out with the lions there.

Now, very interestingly, something has arrived here—this fact, they have probably been there all day long. I thought it was a little bit strange when we got here that the Inka Humas weren't around, but there they are; they actually just popped their heads up out of the shade, and we'll go and have a look at them shortly. Sins all spotted them with his fantastic eyes, and this is very interesting, of course, because it means that they weren't chased off the kill and put to flight. They were chased off the kill, certainly, but they have remained around these male lions, so they obviously no longer feel any kind of threat from them.

But let's go and see perhaps if there aren't more than we can see there, and maybe the entire pride of 11 is—that was—that's very exciting. Nikita, I'm not sure what the figures would be and how you would compare what the figures were with anything that you might have a reference for, but the great legend is that a lion is powerful enough to slap a man's head clean off his shoulders, so if he was to take a full swipe and cuff you around the sort of jaw and ear area, your head would come clean off your shoulders.

So, I mean whether that's true or not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how many people have actually tested it, but they are immensely powerful. We, I think we, as human beings, really don't have a very good understanding of just how feeble we are as physical specimens. Now, it's a slender mongoose knocking about here as well—that's good.

One lioness in front of us; you can see some others—can you, sins? One walking away and one here. Well, here are two of them; let me just go around this way. She's looking up towards the North, south—sorry. So, there we go. Yes, Cal, six—you'd think so, wouldn't you? Eleven versus three—doesn't seem like very good odds. A male lion, however, is designed to fight; that is what they're designed to do, and not necessarily with females, but normally with other males in order to protect their territories.

And so you will find that, yeah, even eleven lionesses are going to struggle to put three males to flight. Also, remember that of the eleven, six of them are sub-adults, which means they will be very reticent to tangle physically with male lions. Now, I think she's looking up towards the rest of the pride. Well, she's not; she's just having a yawn, but the other one I think is looking up towards the rest of the pride, so I think maybe we should go and have a look and see if we can’t find him.

We'll just drive up the scaring path, and I can see some lion tracks on it. They're coming this way, though, so I think they would—these chaps—oops, drove into a small tree behind us. Sins or made a sort of striped grunting noise; I wasn't really sure what he meant. Let's just quickly see; she's looking straight up in this direction. It might be at the vultures, but it might be at the rest of the pride.

Nasty chilly breeze coming out of the southeast; it’s going to be quite cold once the sun does go down. It's a fantastic way to start our afternoon; she's looking at some impala, actually. I can see some impala and zebras, but I don't see the rest of the pride. They've come all the way along this game path here, which leads directly to a pan in some bumbling called One-eyed pan, and I wonder if that's not where the rest of the pride is.

We'll do a quick loop around there while you go back to the Maasai Mara to Brent, who is going to use alliteration to describe the river that is the Mara, in which things die. Well, as you know when you're live out in the African bush, anything can happen at any moment.

While we were passionately sitting for some zebras to possibly leap into the murderous Mara River, a herd of wildebeest came rushing down from the opposite bank, and it looked like they were going to plunge immediately towards the waiting death of the Nile crocodile. But, unfortunately, well, they sort of stopped, having a bit of a team talk before they swam across the stretch of the river. This monster male croc is still right next to us at the moment. They say, "Where is it good?" He weighs probably a good six, seven hundred kilograms, about four meters in length.

This is the first wildebeest in a long time we've seen on the opposite side of the river. Sam's wondering, have we seen any kills made by the crocs this week? The first this week or last week we saw one zebra that was killed by quite a big crocodile, and it was a very small croc. So the young crocodiles have had quite a tough time this year. There have been very few crossings in the northern part of the Mara; most of the crossings have happened at the steep bank crossings down south, where there are very few crocodiles, and they’re a bit hungry this year. They might have to top up on catfish for the rest of the year because the beasts are probably not going to be around for too much longer. The zebras will also cross for a little bit longer, but it looks like these wildebeests might have changed their mind and might actually head down towards Dusty Crossing, or they might just stay on that side of the river for tonight.

Who knows what goes through a little beast's brain? Not me, that's for certain. Oh, Archie, right up ahead of us in Main North, is a hippo fight going on far in the distance, over to the left. It looked quite serious for a second; you can see that male flicking its tail and awful. Ooh, that a snort! So, obviously, a territorial male trying to defend his group of females from an interloper, or possibly even a young male that he's pushing out of the raft of hippopotamus.

Looks like it's calmed down a little bit. There is our bill; these are moving off, but there is a zebra coming up to the crossing, so maybe the zebras might take the chance. And all it takes is one heads-up! I think we should just stick around here a little bit.

I think the zebras—let's give them a second or two to see what they do. If they stay standing, there are more zebras coming in as well. I think they might need a bit of time to build some courage, so I'm going to sit right here. In the meantime, let's send you across to Jamie, oh no, we're not going to Jamie's; perhaps we were going to stick with us.

Joshua wants to know if hippos ever go after animals crossing the Mara River. Sometimes they do, and they are very unpredictable. Sometimes they might save an animal from the crocodiles; other times, they might actually feed off that animal themselves. I've seen hippos feed on wildebeest; I've seen them feed on giraffe; I've seen them feed on other hippos. It is quite rare; normally, they are obviously herbivores, but occasionally they do eat meat. On occasion, they might just kill one of the passing animals for no reason in particular; apart from the fact that they are annoyed that they are close to them.

Some of these crocs seem to have picked up that there are animals around because they're starting to move sort of right into the spot where their animals cross. Okay, well, I think I don't think anything is going to happen just yet, so we're going to keep our patient pants on and sit right here. In the meantime, let's send you across to Jamie with some sleepy lions.

While Brent keeps his patience pants on, for which we are all eternally grateful, the indecisiveness of the wildebeest has truly worked in the animals' favor out here. Look at the battle scars on these young lions. War wounds at a young age, as I assume they are seeking to establish themselves in this area. That's what seems to be the case. It spells bad news for some of the lion prides around here, as a territorial takeover is always done in the initial periods of its beginnings, just the same with the Avoca boys and the Inka Humas.

But for the hyenas of North Clan, they are quite used to lions wandering around; I'm not too concerned about Waffles, but we'll have to wait and see how that plays out this afternoon. However, the hyenas are far more concerned with taking advantage of both the arrival of the migration and the stormy weather we've experienced. The localized yet heavy rains that we have been experiencing in the Mara have transformed North Clan land back into its usual swampy state.

The hyena den, under these conditions after a massive downpour, we happened upon Fergus, who was loping over the mushy ground, hunting in the half-hearted manner of a hyena, simply trying his luck with boundless stamina on his side. All Ferg had to do was run into the scattered antelope and zebra causing chaos while looking for a weakness. His attention was diverted by the tantalizing prospect of an old sinewy carcass—not much nutrition there. He was joined by his mother, Waffles, and began to behave like a small cub rather than a fully grown male in his prime.

Perhaps even hyena revert, winning the company of their parents. Waffles waited for her son to lose interest in the pile of old bones before the two of them set off on a hunting mission together, just like old times. Waffles may have new cubs, but that doesn't mean that she has forgotten about her two boys. They moved off and left us in their wake, and leave us in their wake they did, because there was simply no way that we could follow them over that wet ground.

A truly lovely sight to see that Waffles is not completely distracted by her two new cubs and, in fact, still loves her boys equally; because the time we spent with her in the past, she has always been with them, always following them around, and I can only imagine that they feel a little bereft. Our lions are asleep peacefully; the same cannot be said for the lions of Juma.

Now what we've got here is the lioness of the Inka Huma Pride now staring down—The males who have just become aware of these two lionesses. We've been driving around seeing if the rest of the pride is here; they are not. They seem to be on some bambi-lee, I think. So it's just the two lionesses here at the moment, and those males have spotted them, and they're looking this way.

Whether they will decide to come up here and investigate is anyone's guess. It is a cool afternoon, only about 23 degrees Celsius or so, and so the chances are quite strong that, you know, they could move and come up here and see what's going on. Child of the universe, I think it's unlikely that the Inka Humas would try and chase off a lone hostile male unless, of course, there were cubs that they felt were threatened.

I have seen females chase males; I've seen them bite them. I mean, we have had that tremendous fight with Brent where I think it was the Birmingham boys—two of them started having a go at each other, and then the females got involved and bit them both. So it's not like there won't fight with males, but there'd be very careful of the misperception; they've got a lot more—many lots with them now. One of those males has started slinking off towards the right-hand side of your picture, and the lioness was very aware of it.

The other lioness has also lifted her head now; she was looking a bit sleepy. She's just behind that stick, I'm afraid. I can just try and sneak slightly forward. What a nice little standoff we've got going here, and who knows if this is the first meeting that they've had?

Yeah, Larina, good thought! You wonder if this is Amber Eyes and the youngest lioness. I'm not sure; I haven't managed to see adequately yet. It's fascinating. I can't see the other two; I don't know if one of them is coming around the side. No, there's one to his left, I think; I doubt they'll try and flank these lionesses. I think they just walk straight up to them if they wanted to really find out what was going on.

I see him glancing to his left there—right! The other male's coming this way. But, like I say, these lionesses don't seem to be particularly distressed. There's definitely one on his right-hand side, our left, still eating, and back to the food. Oh, are we? Giraffe girl? They look like they have relatively well-fed, but this looks—what a lot of meat left on that carcass, so I don't know how much of it they ate. They're certainly not full.

The Inka Humas may have had a little bit before they were chased off, I suppose. Also, you know, there must still be quite nervous of the youngsters, some of whom are almost two years old and others have just passed two years old. And one of those Avocas is very interested; he's not interested enough to get up here and come and say hello.

What's going on? One wonders if it's just teenage nerves; perhaps he's seen a lady through the grass and thinking to himself, "I'd like to go and say hello, but I don't know what to say! You know, I mean, hi, my name is George or my name's Pinkerton. What's your name?" You know, I mean, Amber Eyes, if that is her, is an intimidating lioness.

See, look, he's looking away, and he seems to be slightly shamed, the fact that he's not prepared to come say hello to her. His mates are saying to him, "Come on; just go say hi." You know, "I'd like to," but he's even nervous. Namaste; I anticipate something. If they do meet up, there'll be a fight and a greeting. I don't think that they are well-acquainted enough for it to be a friendly head rubbing event, but I don't think that the males would try and tear the females apart.

She's still looking towards them. Now, there could be two reasons for this. One, they’re hungry, that's the most obvious reason. The other is, of course, that there's still a negotiated settlement to be made here between the Avocas and the Inka Huma Pride. When the Birmingham boys came into this area, they started killing everything they could find, and they murdered a few lionesses here.

One of them eventually went and made peace with the Avoca sand. We had a tremendous sighting one evening, late one evening; we drove out, and there we had the five Birmingham boys, I think it was. That's right, and one of the Inka Huma lionesses; she tried to entice each of them to mate with her, and eventually one did. Quite apart from her embarrassingly obvious state, it was fascinating to see how she was trying to coax them, appease them, and show her acceptance of them, quite possibly for the rest of the pride.

There we go; now she's—it looks like laying down, so she's probably quite safe. Fantastic stuff! All right, I think we'll go and have another look at the males now, while we go all the way across to the Maasai Mara, where Brent Lea Smith remains on the banks of the great river itself.

So, while we play the patience game down at the edge of the Mara River, we've got a lovely ripple's a starling to show you sitting right next to us. Isn't that wonderful? Even though there's very little light, you can still see their iridescent coming off their feathers and the little midges buzzing around their head.

Now we’ve had a bit of an interesting development on the opposite bank: now that big herd of zebras, which also has come to join the wildebeest, and they seem to be having a big chitchat about whether it's going to be worth their while to brave the river before sunset. Now, with the zebras arriving, I think it actually increases the chance of a crossing happening. What we really need is some zebras to start preying on the opposite bank; that normally gets them going properly.

Just watch carefully; we've got time, and the most important thing when you're out in the African bush is patience, patience, patience. Okay, so while we play the patience game with all these little zebra fights but a kick to the face, they are quite horrible to each other, but not as horrible as lions are to them.

Let's go catch up with the Olololo Pride again on their search for food. The Olololo Pride, still surrounded by the migration, continued the haphazard hunting style but with no luck. Although it seems they had fed the night before, so hunting was not a serious business.

Before too long, they settled down in the shade of a gardenia, hoping rather that a wildebeest would come to them. Well, the zebras seem to be going one way; the wildebeests the other. It's going to be interesting to see what happens here. Will they move back up towards the Main North crossing, or will zebras heading down towards Main South prompt the wildebeests to change their mind and join the masses? They try avoiding the jaws of death that live in the Mara River.

One thing I've learned in all my years in the African bush is not to predict too much; let's wait and see what happens. Now, of course, the gathering of full Eastern zebras around the crossings like this might attract the attention of the Paradise Pride of lions that love to hang around at the crossings and pick off wounded or weak wildebeests and zebra and topi for that matter, before or after they cross the Mara River.

Yeah, it's all quite a pretty sight there of wildebeests and zebra mixed. I'd say there's probably a few more wildebeests than zebra, but not too many more now. It's quite uncommon for them to cross in the dark. Normally, you get some crossings very early in the morning and quite a few during the day, and then in the next sort of half an hour is the last sort of crossing time. There look to be some zebras that are approaching the river with a little bit more intent.

And I use the brave zebra who will lead the mass. It looks like the wildebeests have decided they're not going to follow the zebras. Sure, the crocodiles can't wait! And they say it's been tough for the crocs at the northern crossings this year, or we continue to play the patience game here at Main South crossing, they'd send you back to James Henry, who's still with those male lions munching on a waterbuck.

Yes, they are munching away, and they've actually got quite a lot to eat, I think, certainly. I've particularly noticed that they shifted quite a bit of their food. From what I understand, there was a bit of consternation this morning—I’m not sure what time. Oh, chopper flying over; it's either doing some kind of guarding job or game counting job or something like that.

All the vultures have taken to the skies—terrifying! I'm not sure what they thought they were going to do when they were in the sky. The blood on the poor—go to the poor? Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, it's very good to be in their company once again, and one of the lionesses is apparently moving. We can't see her from here; we're just going to wait and see if she appears, and we'll let you know.

We are, of course, here with other people from Babu Sook, and they've spotted one of the females moving. Casada morally? Unsure how to answer that question—do lions come in more than two or three colors? Or German, sort of red, yellow, or blue; the mustard yellow? I've never seen a blue or a red one.

You're probably talking about leucism or albinism. Yes, you do get leucistic lions or white lions. They look not quite albino, but they certainly look a lot blonder than these ones. Their manes come in different colors; often in this area, a black mane indicates more dominance, more testosterone.

These chaps won't have black manes until a little bit later in their lives. But otherwise, lions are relatively similar colors. The ones up in the Maasai Mara, exactly the same colors as these ones, but quite interestingly, they are a slightly different shape; their ears up there are very boxy and very hairy. And I was chatting about this just the other day, and he reckons it's because the wind blows constantly over there, that the hairs have to protect the lions’ ears from the wind.

While we were on foot this morning, we did get a radio call that there were some lions what they thought fighting around this area, and this is what it turned out to be. And while I think that the initial thought was that the lions—the males were having a fight, you'll probably find that it was the males chasing the females off their kill. Wonderful!

Jamie Patterson's got some male lions, probably slightly younger than these ones as far as I understand. But I did understand from her this morning that they'd been roaring, so I don't really understand why that happened. And a whole host of antelope off in the distance, and if these boys are planning a territorial takeover, which I think that they are, I think that's what they're going to have planned. I mean, they were roaring this morning, and mid-afternoon, probably the most half-hearted roar I've ever heard in my entire life. But they did roar this morning.

Now, if they're aiming to take over this territory, it would be a very productive place to be. They'll have to get moving a little bit later, but they do seem to be a vacuum that they are slotting into when it comes to the absence of male lions around here.

However, if they were really intent on the best possible territory, then they would probably be aiming for the banks of the Mara River because that is where all the action happens, as the Paradise Pride well knows. There are few things as mesmerizing as watching a big cat stalking up to unsuspecting prey, and the Paradise Pride seem to have it down to an art.

A group of topi that were distracted and distressed at the prospect of crossing the Mara River had no idea that the danger was not in front of them but rapidly closing the distance from behind. The lioness made her break, and the herd scattered. Most of the topi raced to safety along the river, but one topi unwittingly went in the wrong direction, straight towards where the rest of the pride were hidden in the thicket.

The topi was surrounded on every side, and its demise seemed inevitable. Yet somehow it bounded away unscathed! Even the lions seemed a tad confused about how on earth they missed that one. Honestly, to this day, I'm still not entirely sure how the Paradise Pride missed that topi.

However, I think that the sheer abundance of food has made the lions relatively lackluster in their hunting attempts. Shame, sort of a puncture wound there on his leg. Hey, boy, I brought over—no, no, we can't see it. Male lions, when they’re very young, are always sort of smooth and uninjured and beautiful looking, and then they get to the stage where their face and their bodies tell the story of the path that their life has taken them down.

And these boys have just started that mouthing. One of course got a truly permanent injury with that missing tail tip, but the network of scars will eventually crisscross across their entire face. Say my name, boy! The manes on these lions are short because they are young. There is a certain genetic factor depending upon where you are in Africa that will affect the growth of the males’ manes.

In some really hot places to the north of where we are now, you'll actually find that male lions hardly develop manes at all because they are more of a disadvantage than anything else in that, and there's that genetic aspect to that as well.

So these boys, I would say the youngest one, who is right now—got his bigs right in the air. He's not providing us with a view of his mane. I would say he's not much older than three years old, if that; his mane is still very, very small. These boys are young to have moved and to start searching for a territory.

It's interesting, but perhaps they too have realized there's a vacuum here that they can capitalize on. I think they have; I think that's what their plan is. Flies are starting to really bug them; all of their open wounds and the flies are sitting on them. After all the rain that we've had, the plan from here, I did say to Monday, at halfway—the halfway mark, we were going to go and check on Waffles and just see if she's come across to the den.

We'll do a quick loop to see if we can find her. She might have gone back to the rest of the clan; I'd rather see if we can find her. If we can't, then we will return to these gentlemen, who should be getting up as if the sun starts to go down. As the likelihood of these lions getting up grows ever greater, as the sun goes down, the likelihood of those zebras crossing in the window period, if they have, is rapidly closing.

Well, their zebra and wildebeest have spread out now, some of them moving away from the river, some of them just having a graze. I think there's a chance of a potential crossing, and I think we and I have to pay the patience game a little longer.

Unfortunately for us, in not too long, we're going to be the only people out in the Mara, so if it does happen, we'll be right here. And as we know with nature, it is always a patience game. Zebras are so nasty to each other.

Hello, Ivy! Ivy would like to know, are there any predators that go after the crocodiles? When a crocodile's at this size, Ivy, very little will go after it, and the lions will occasionally fight with them, and lions will eat small crocodiles if the opportunity arises.

So will methods, but the biggest threat to a big crocodile is an even bigger crocodile. They can injure and kill each other quite frequently. A big male crocodile, like this one sitting right next to us, would often eat smaller crocodiles straight ahead.

Arch, now that is very unusual; they almost never cross in that position. I've never seen a crossing at that spot. I'm just going to move forward a bit. I know croc gave them a fright, so idiots—the croc jumped up and moved and gave them a fright.

Here we go—there's their croc. Those crocs gave them a fright; they nearly stood on the crocodile's head! That was quite funny, but now you can see the zebras and the wildebeests streaming away from the river for now. All the beasts being bulled—the beasts—they could change their mind in a split second. It is quite pretty, though, in this lovely diffused, hate evening light.

I don't know; I've still got a feeling—I think we're going to play our patience game a little bit longer, but while we do that, they send you back to Jamie with some sleepy lions.

So while Brent keeps his patience pants on for which we are all eternally grateful, the indecisiveness of the wildebeest has truly worked in the animals' favour out here. Look at the battle scars on these young lions. War wounds at a young age, as I assume they are seeking to establish themselves in this area; that's what seems to be the case. It spells bad news for some of the lion prides around here, as a territorial takeover is always done in the initial periods of its beginnings, just the same with the Avocas and the Inka Humas.

But for the hyenas of North Clan, they are quite used to lions wandering about; I'm not too concerned about Waffles, but we'll have to wait and see how that plays out this afternoon. However, the hyenas are far more concerned with taking advantage of both the arrival of the migration and the stormy weather we've experienced. The localized yet heavy rains we have been experiencing in the Mara have transformed North Clan land back into its usual swampy state.

The hyena den, under these conditions after a massive downpour, we happened upon Fergus, who was loping over the mushy ground, hunting in the half-hearted manner of a hyena, simply trying his luck with boundless stamina on his side. All Ferg had to do was run into the scattered antelope and zebra causing chaos while looking for a weakness. His attention was diverted by the tantalizing prospect of an old sinewy carcass—not much nutrition there. He was joined by his mother, Waffles, and began to behave like a small cub rather than a fully grown male in his prime.

Perhaps even hyena revert, winning the company of their parents. Waffles waited for her son to lose interest in the pile of old bones before the two of them set off on a hunting mission together, just like old times. Waffles may have new cubs, but that doesn't mean that she has forgotten about her two boys. They moved off and left us in their wake, and leave us in their wake they did, because there was simply no way that we could follow them over the wet ground.

A truly lovely sight to see that Waffles is not completely distracted by her two new cubs and, in fact, still loves her boys equally. We spent a lot of time with her in the past, and she has always been with them, always following them around, and I can only imagine that they feel a little bereft. Our lions are asleep peacefully; the same cannot be said for the lions of Juma.

Now what we've got here is the lioness of the Inka Huma Pride now staring down—the males who have just become aware of these two lionesses. We've been driving around seeing if the rest of the pride is here; they are not. They seem to be on some Bambi-lee, I think, so it's just the two lionesses here at the moment, and those males have spotted them, and they're looking this way.

Whether they will decide to come up here and investigate is anyone's guess. It is a cool afternoon, only about 23 degrees Celsius or so, and so the chances are quite strong that they could move and come up here and see what's going on. Child of the universe, I think it’s unlikely that the Inka Humas would try to chase off a lone hostile male unless there were cubs that they felt were threatened.

I've seen females chase males; I've seen them bite them. I mean, we had that tremendous fight with Brent, where I think it was the Birmingham boys—two of them started having a go at each other, and then the females got involved and bit them both. So it's not like they won't fight with males, but they'd be very careful of the misperception; they've got many lots with them now. One of those males has started slinking off towards the right-hand side of your picture, and the lioness was very aware of it.

The other lioness has also lifted her head now; she was looking a bit sleepy. She's just behind that stick. I can just try and sneak slightly forward. What a nice little standoff we've got going here, and who knows if this is the first meeting that they've had?

Yeah, Larina, good thought! You wonder if this is Amber Eyes and the youngest lioness. I'm not sure; I haven't managed to see adequately yet. It's fascinating. I can't see the other two; I don't know if one of them is coming around the side. No, there's one to his left, I think; I doubt they'll try and flank these lionesses. I think they just walk straight up to them if they wanted to really find out what was going on.

I see him glancing to his left there. The other male's coming this way, but like I say, these lionesses don't seem to be particularly distressed. There's definitely one on his right-hand side, our left, still eating, and back to the food. Oh, are we? Giraffe girl? They look like they have relatively well-fed, but there is a lot of meat left on that carcass. So I don't know how much of it they ate; they're certainly not full.

The Inka Humas may have had a little bit before they were chased off, I suppose. Also, you know, there must still be quite nervous of the youngsters, some of whom are almost two years old and others have just passed two years old. And one of those Avocas is very interested; he's not interested enough to get up here and come and say hello.

What's going on? One wonders if it's just teenage nerves; perhaps he's seen a lady through the grass and thinking to himself, "I'd like to go and say hello, but I don't know what to say! You know, I mean, hi, my name is George or my name's Pinkerton. What's your name?" You know, I mean, Amber Eyes, if that is her, is an intimidating lioness.

See, look, he's looking away, and he seems to be slightly shamed, the fact that he's not prepared to come say hello to her. His mates are saying to him, "Come on; just go say hi." You know, "I'd like to," but he's even nervous. Namaste; I anticipate something. If they do meet up, there'll be a fight and a greeting. I don't think that they are well acquainted enough for it to be a friendly head rubbing event, but I don't think that the males would try and tear the females apart.

She's still looking towards them. Now, there could be two reasons for this. One, they’re hungry, that's the most obvious reason. The other is, of course, that there's still a negotiated settlement to be made here between the Avocas and the Inka Huma Pride. When the Birmingham boys came into this area, they started killing everything they could find, and they murdered a few lionesses here.

One of them eventually went and made peace with the Avoca sand. We had a tremendous sighting one evening, late one evening; we drove out, and there we had the five Birmingham boys, I think it was. That's right, and one of the Inka Huma lionesses; she tried to entice each of them to mate with her, and eventually one did. Quite apart from her embarrassingly obvious state, it was fascinating to see how she was trying to coax them, appease them, and show her acceptance of them, quite possibly for the rest of the pride.

There we go; now she's—it looks like laying down, so she's probably quite safe. Fantastic stuff! All right, I think we'll go and have another look at the males now, while we go all the way across to the Maasai Mara, where Brent Lea Smith remains on the banks of the great river itself.

So, while we play the patience game down at the edge of the Mara River, we've got a lovely ripple's a starling to show you sitting right next to us. Isn't that wonderful? Even though there's very little light, you can still see their iridescent coming off their feathers and the little midges buzzing around their head.

Now we’ve had a bit of an interesting development on the opposite bank: now that big herd of zebras, which also has come to join the wildebeest, and they seem to be having a big chitchat about whether it's going to be worth their while to brave the river before sunset.

Now, with the zebras arriving, I think it actually increases the chance of a crossing happening. What we really need is some zebras to start preying on the opposite bank; that normally gets them going properly.

Just watch carefully; we've got time, and the most important thing when you're out in the African bush is patience, patience, patience. Okay, so while we play the patience game with all these little zebra fights but a kick to the face, they are quite horrible to each other, but not as horrible as lions are to them.

Let's go catch up with the Olololo Pride again on their search for food. The Olololo Pride, still surrounded by the migration, continued the haphazard hunting style but with no luck. Although it seems they had fed the night before, so hunting was not a serious business.

Before too long, they settled down in the shade of a gardenia, hoping rather that a wildebeest would come to them. Well, the zebras seem to be going one way; the wildebeests the other. It's going to be interesting to see what happens here. Will they move back up towards the Main North crossing, or will zebras heading down towards Main South prompt the wildebeests to change their mind and join the masses? They try avoiding the jaws of death that live in the Mara River.

One thing I've learned in all my years in the African bush is not to predict too much; let's wait and see what happens. Now, of course, the gathering of full Eastern zebras around the crossings like this might attract the attention of the Paradise Pride of lions that love to hang around at the crossings and pick off wounded or weak wildebeests and zebra and topi for that matter, before or after they cross the Mara River.

Yeah, it's all quite a pretty sight there of wildebeests and zebra mixed. I'd say there's probably a few more wildebeests than zebra, but not too many more now. It's quite uncommon for them to cross in the dark. Normally, you get some crossings very early in the morning and quite a few during the day, and then in the next sort of half an hour is the last sort of crossing time. There look to be some zebras that are approaching the river with a little bit more intent.

And I use the brave zebra who will lead the mass. It looks like the wildebeests have decided they're not going to follow the zebras. Sure, the crocodiles can't wait! And they say it's been tough for the crocs at the northern crossings this year, or we continue to play the patience game here at Main South crossing, they'd send you back to James Henry, who's still with those male lions munching on a waterbuck.

Yes, they are munching away, and they've actually got quite a lot to eat, I think, certainly. I've particularly noticed that they shifted quite a bit of their food. From what I understand, there was a bit of consternation this morning—I’m not sure what time.

Oh, chopper flying over; it's either doing some kind of guarding job or game counting job or something like that. All the vultures have taken to the skies—terrifying! I'm not sure what they thought they were going to do when they were in the sky. The blood on the poor—go to the poor? Yeah, that’s the one.

Anyway, it's very good to be in their company once again, and one of the lionesses is apparently moving. We can't see her from here; we're just going to wait and see if she appears, and we'll let you know.

We are, of course, here with other people from Babu Sook, and they've spotted one of the females moving. Casada morally? Unsure how to answer that question—do lions come in more than two or three colors? Or German, sort of red, yellow, or blue; the mustard yellow?

I've never seen a blue or a red one. You're probably talking about leucism or albinism. Yes, you do get leucistic lions or white lions. They look not quite albino, but they certainly look a lot blonder than these ones. Their manes come in different colors; often in this area, a black mane indicates more dominance, more testosterone.

These chaps won't have black manes until a little bit later in their lives. But otherwise, lions are relatively similar colors. The ones up in the Maasai Mara, exactly the same colors as these ones, but quite interestingly, they are a slightly different shape; their ears up there are very boxy and very hairy.

And I was chatting about this just the other day, and he reckons it's because the wind blows constantly over there, that the hairs have to protect the lions’ ears from the wind. While we were on foot this morning, we did get a radio call that there were some lions what they thought were fighting around this area, and this is what it turned out to be.

And while I think that the initial thought was that the lions—the males were having a fight, you'll probably find that it was the males chasing the females off their kill. Wonderful. Jamie Patterson's got some male lions, probably slightly younger than these ones as far as I understand. But I did understand from her this morning that they'd been roaring, so I don't really understand why that happened.

And a whole host of antelope off in the distance, and if these boys are planning a territorial takeover, which I think that they are; I think that's what they're going to have planned. I mean, they were roaring this morning, and mid-afternoon probably the most half-hearted roar I have ever heard in my entire life, but they did roar this morning.

Now, if they're aiming to take over this territory, it would be a very productive place to be. They'll have to get moving a little bit later, but they do seem to be a vacuum that they are slotting into when it comes to the absence of male lions around here.

However, if they were really intent on the best possible territory, then they would probably be aiming for the banks of the Mara River because that is where all the action happens, as the Paradise Pride well knows. There are few things as mesmerizing as watching a big cat stalking up to unsuspecting prey, and the Paradise Pride seem to have it down to an art.

A group of topi that were distracted and distressed at the prospect of crossing the Mara River had no idea that the danger was not in front of them but rapidly closing the distance from behind. The lioness made her break, and the herd scattered. Most of the topi raced to safety along the river, but one topi unwittingly went in the wrong direction, straight towards where the rest of the pride were hidden in the thicket.

The topi was surrounded on every side, and its demise seemed inevitable. Yet somehow it bounded away unscathed! Even the lions seemed a tad confused about how on earth they missed that one. Honestly, to this day, I'm still not entirely sure how the Paradise Pride missed that topi.

However, I think that the sheer abundance of food has made the lions relatively lackluster in their hunting attempts. Shame, sort of a puncture wound there on his leg. Hey, boy, I brought over—no, no, we can't see it. Male lions, when they’re very young, are always sort of smooth and uninjured and beautiful looking, and then they get to the stage where their face and their bodies tell the story of the path that their life has taken them down.

And these boys have just started that mouthing. One of course got a truly permanent injury with that missing tail tip, but the network of scars will eventually crisscross across their entire face. Say my name, boy! The manes on these lions are short because they are young. There is a certain genetic factor depending upon where you are in Africa that will affect the growth of the males’ manes.

In some really hot places to the north of where we are now, you'll actually find that male lions hardly develop manes at all because they are more of a disadvantage than anything else in that. And there's that genetic aspect to that as well.

So these boys, I would say the youngest one, who is right now got his bigs right in the air, he's not providing us with a view of his mane. I would say he's not much older than three years old, if that. his mane is still very, very small. These boys are young to have moved and to start searching for a territory.

It's interesting, but perhaps they too have realized there's a vacuum here that they can capitalize on. I think they have; I think that's what their plan is. Flies are starting to really bug them all of their open wounds, the flies are sitting on them after all the rain that we've had. The plan from here, I did say to Monday, at halfway—the halfway mark, we were going to go and check on Waffles and just see if she's come across to the den.

We'll do a quick loop to see if we can find her. If we can't, then we will return to these gentlemen, who should be getting up as if the sun starts to go down. As the likelihood of these lions getting up grows ever greater, as the sun goes down, the likelihood of those zebras crossing in the window period, if they have, is rapidly closing.

Well, their zebra and wildebeest have spread out now, some of them moving away from the river, some of them just having a graze. I think there's a chance of a potential crossing, and I think we and I have to pay the patience game a little longer.

Unfortunately for us, in not too long, we're going to be the only people out in the Mara, so if it does happen, we'll be right here. And as we know with nature, it is always a patience game.

Zebras are so nasty to each other.

Hello, Ivy! Ivy would like to know, are there any predators that go after the crocodiles? When a crocodile's at this size, Ivy, very little will go after it, and the lions will occasionally fight with them, and lions will eat small crocodiles if the opportunity arises.

So will methods, but the biggest threat to a big crocodile is an even bigger crocodile. They can injure and kill each other quite frequently. A big male crocodile, like this one sitting right next to us, would often eat smaller crocodiles straight ahead.

Arch, now that is very unusual; they almost never cross in that position. I've never seen a crossing at that spot. I'm just going to move forward a bit. I know croc gave them a fright, so idiots—the croc jumped up and moved and gave them a fright.

Here we go—there's their croc. Those crocs gave them a fright; they nearly stood on the crocs' head! That was quite funny, but now you can see the zebras and the wildebeests streaming away from the river for now. All the beasts being bulled—the beasts—they could change their mind in a split second. It is quite pretty, though, in this lovely diffused light, evening light.

I don't know; I've still got a feeling—I think we're going to play our patience game a little bit longer. But while we do that, they send you back to Jamie with some sleepy lions.

So while Brent keeps his patience pants on for which we are all eternally grateful, the indecisiveness of the wildebeest has truly worked in the animals' favour out here. Look at the battle scars on these young lions. War wounds at a young age, as I assume they are seeking to establish themselves in this area. That's what seems to be the case. It spells bad news for some of the lion prides around here as a territorial takeover is always done in the initial periods of its beginnings, just the same with the Avocas and the Inka Humas.

But for the hyenas of North Clan, they are quite used to lions wandering around; I'm not too concerned about Waffles, but we'll have to wait and see how that plays out this afternoon. However, the hyenas are far more concerned with taking advantage of both the arrival of the migration and the stormy weather we've experienced. The localized yet heavy rains that we have been experiencing in the Mara have transformed North Clan land back into its usual swampy state.

The hyena den, under these conditions after a massive downpour, we happened upon Fergus, who was loping over the mushy ground, hunting in the half-hearted manner of a hyena, simply trying his luck with boundless stamina on his side. All Ferg had to do was run into the scattered antelope and zebra causing chaos while looking for a weakness. His attention was diverted by the tantalizing prospect of an old sinewy carcass—not much nutrition there. He was joined by his mother, Waffles, and began to behave like a small cub rather than a fully grown male in his prime.

Perhaps even hyena revert, winning the company of their parents. Waffles waited for her son to lose interest in the pile of old bones before the two of them set off on a hunting mission together, just like old times. Waffles may have new cubs, but that doesn't mean that she has forgotten about her two boys. They moved off and left us in their wake, and leave us in their wake they did, because there was simply no way that we could follow them over that wet ground.

A truly lovely sight to see that Waffles is not completely distracted by her two new cubs and, in fact, still loves her boys equally; because the time we spent with her in the past, she has always been with them, always following them around, and I can only imagine that they feel a little bereft. Our lions are asleep peacefully; the same cannot be said for the lions of Juma.

Now what we've got here is the lioness of the Inka Huma Pride now staring down—the males who have just become aware of these two lionesses. We've been driving around seeing if the rest of the pride is here; they are not. They seem to be on some Bambi-lee, I think, so it's just the two lionesses here at the moment, and those males have spotted them, and they're looking this way.

Whether they will decide to come up here and investigate is anyone's guess. It is a cool afternoon, only about 23 degrees Celsius or so, and so the chances are quite strong that they could move and come up here and see what's going on. Child of the universe, I think it’s unlikely that the Inka Humas would try to chase off a lone hostile male unless there were cubs that they felt were threatened.

I've seen females chase males; I've seen them bite them. I mean, we had that tremendous fight with Brent, where I think it was the Birmingham boys—two of them started having a go at each other, and then the females got involved and bit them both. So it's not like there won't fight with males, but there'd be very careful of the misperception; they've got a lot more—many lots with them now. One of those males has started slinking off towards the right-hand side of your picture, and the lioness was very aware of it.

The other lioness has also lifted her head now; she was looking a bit sleepy. She's just behind that stick. I can just try and sneak slightly forward. What a nice little standoff we've got going here, and who knows if this is the first meeting that they've had?

Yeah, Larina, good thought! You wonder if this is Amber Eyes and the youngest lioness. I'm not sure; I haven't managed to see adequately yet. It's fascinating. I can't see the other two; I don't know if one of them is coming around the side. No, there's one to his left, I think; I doubt they'll try and flank these lionesses. I think they just walk straight up to them if they wanted to really find out what was going on.

I see him glancing to his left there—right! The other male's coming this way, but like I say, these lionesses don't seem to be particularly distressed. There's definitely one on his right-hand side, our left, still eating, and back to the food. Oh, are we? Giraffe girl? They look like they have relatively well-fed, but there is a lot of meat left on that carcass. So I don't know how much of it they ate; they're certainly not full.

The Inka Humas may have had a little bit before they were chased off, I suppose. Also, you know, there must still be quite nervous of the youngsters, some of whom are almost two years old and others have just passed two years old. And one of those Avocas is very interested; he's not interested enough to get up here and come and say hello.

What's going on? One wonders if it's just teenage nerves; perhaps he's seen a lady through the grass and thinking to himself, "I'd like to go and say hello, but I don't know what to say! You know, I mean, hi, my name is George or my name's Pinkerton. What's your name?" You know, I mean, Amber Eyes, if that is her, is an intimidating lioness.

See, look, he's looking away, and he seems to be slightly shamed, the fact that he's not prepared to come say hello to her. His mates are saying to him, "Come on; just go say hi." You know, "I'd like to," but he's even nervous. Namaste; I anticipate something. If they do meet up, there'll be a fight and a greeting. I don't think that they are well acquainted enough for it to be a friendly head rubbing event, but I don't think that the males would try and tear the females apart.

She's still looking towards them. Now, there could be two reasons for this. One, they’re hungry, that's the most obvious reason. The other is, of course, that there's still a negotiated settlement to be made here between the Avocas and the Inka Huma Pride.

When the Birmingham boys came into this area, they started killing everything they could find, and they murdered a few lionesses here. One of them eventually went and made peace with the Avoca sand. We had a tremendous sighting one evening, late one evening; we drove out, and there we had the five Birmingham boys, I think it was. That's right, and one of the Inka Huma lionesses; she tried to entice each of them to mate with her, and eventually one did. Quite apart from her embarrassingly obvious state, it was fascinating to see how she was trying to coax them, appease them, and show her acceptance of them, quite possibly for the rest of the pride.

There we go; now she's—it looks like laying down, so she's probably quite safe. Fantastic stuff! All right, I think we'll go and have another look at the males now, while we go all the way across to the Maasai Mara, where Brent Lea Smith remains on the banks of the great river itself.

So, while we play the patience game down at the edge of the Mara River, we've got a lovely ripple's a starling to show you sitting right next to us. Isn't that wonderful? Even though there's very little light, you can still see their iridescent coming off their feathers and the little midges buzzing around their head.

Now we’ve had a bit of an interesting development on the opposite bank: now that big herd of zebras, which also has come to join the wildebeest, and they seem to be having a big chitchat about whether it's going to be worth their while to brave the river before sunset.

Now, with the zebras arriving, I think it actually increases the chance of a crossing happening. What we really need is some zebras to start preying on the opposite bank; that normally gets them going properly.

Just watch carefully; we've got time, and the most important thing when you're out in the African bush is patience, patience, patience. Okay, so while we play the patience game with all these little zebra fights but a kick to the face, they are quite horrible to each other, but not as horrible as lions are to them.

Let's go catch up with the Olololo Pride again on their search for food. The Olololo Pride, still surrounded by the migration, continued the haphazard hunting style but with no luck. Although it seems they had fed the night before, so hunting was not a serious business.

Before too long, they settled down in the shade of a gardenia, hoping rather that a wildebeest would come to them. Well, the zebras seem to be going one way; the wildebeests the other. It's going to be interesting to see what happens here. Will they move back up towards the Main North crossing, or will zebras heading down towards Main South prompt the wildebeests to change their mind and join the masses? They try avoiding the jaws of death that live in the Mara River.

One thing I've learned in all my years in the African bush is not to predict too much; let's wait and see what happens. Now, of course, the gathering of full Eastern zebras around the crossings like this might attract the attention of the Paradise Pride of lions that love to hang around at the crossings and pick off wounded or weak wildebeests and zebra and topi for that matter, before or after they cross the Mara River.

Yeah, it's all quite a pretty sight there of