Night of the Hunt showing in USA

If you haven't already caught it, Night of the Hunt is showing on the National Geographic Channel in the US at the moment - next airing on Sunday.

Hyena PR

When the public relations skills were handed out to the animals, the hyenas must have been somewhere else - and the lions got the hyena share of human popularity.

Male lions, despite usually being greedy thieving thugs, have lovely long manes and charismatic looks. They inspire awe and respect among humans. Male hyenas on the other hand, are often seen wallowing in mud, or the excrement of other animals, perhaps hanging round lions as they feed, apparently hoping for scraps left by the king of beasts. The male hyena has a reputation for cowardice and submission in front of the more powerful females.

But if you look closely at the hyenas surrounding lions on a kill (for real or on TV), you will quite likely see one with blood on his neck - certainly the animal that made the kill - a hyena and not a lion.

Many people now realise that the truth about hyenas differs from the way they have been portrayed in the media. Night filming is helping us uncover more of what hyenas, and male hyenas in particular, really do.

The male hyenas do the bulk of the hunting - the feeding of the clan. They are faster and lighter than the bulky females, and can as a group out-run and bring down almost any animal they choose, healthy or not. At night it seems that hyenas are almost completely predatory, hardly bothering with carrion, while lions will steal a significant proportion of hyena kills.

The male hyenas do seem to get a raw deal. But in reality, they are valued members of the clan, acting as baby sitters at the den, giving support and reassurance to youngsters, making kills for suckling females, and generally acting as a mobile security network keeping the boundaries of the clan territory intact. And when lions threaten it's the males who dart around the lions, harrying them, getting them to run and tire, while the powerful testosterone filled females have the serious muscle ready
just in case.

John Lynch Voices Our Amazing Lion Film

The very handsome John Lynch came to Wounded Buffalo studios in Bristol today so that Ben Peace* could record him doing the voiceover for The Amazing Lion Film.

His gorgeous Irish voice works wonderfully and suddenly this film is looking really real.

*Ben is planning to name his next son Warren

What Happens Next?

Sorry about the long silence, we've had our heads buried in post-production for the last umpty squillion weeks, finally ... finally the picture is locked and the Man Upstairs says he likes it. We're now doing script tweaks, sound stuff and grading. The Astonishing Lion Movie (title to be confirmed) will be on your screens in the UK and Stateside in September. We'll tell you more and put trailers up when the Man Upstairs says we can.

We are also preparing the next filming expedition for the Ant Film which sets off just before Easter to Costa Rica so expect this screen to flicker back into life soon.

Thank you for your patience

Brian's Hooligans

Brian (the lion)* is the coolest cat on the plains. He’s one of the mature males of the Bilashaka pride and under the thumb/paws of his cubs. His laid back 'love and peace' attitude seems a bit out of place for a large male but perhaps due to his two most ferocious adult females, the mothers to his offspring, the youngsters love having him around.

Following Brian and his large group of boisterous over-grown cubs have given us the most exciting and entertaining nights of our trip so far. Brian’s cubs are around 18 months to two years old and have the stature of nearly full-grown lions but none of the prowess! Their mothers seem to despair and abandon them at dark, opting to catch their own food and leave their kids to their own devices.

For the last few days the moon has risen an hour or two after sunset, which in combination with cloudy skies creates a period of total darkness, the perfect conditions for our lions to head out and terrify the neighbourhood.

The gang consists of five young males and four girls, the smaller of which we call Kit Kat. She is an amazing lioness and the driving force behind the groups hunting efforts. Most lions may hunt once or twice a night before crashing out to sleep but Kit Kat just keeps on chasing and chasing anything that moves. We're exhausted. Her hunting 'technique’ is not so much to stalk an animal but to simply run it down! This method can work on dark nights, but not in daylight. We’ve repeatedly filmed her both day and night run over 100m flat out just to reach where her prey was standing before giving chase. Most adult lions employ some sort of stealth and patience but Kit Kat just relies on endless enthusiasm.

Kit Kat's insatiable appetite for hunting has led her to chase topi, zebra, Impala, and she even gets the odd fawn which her brothers promptly steal. But she and the rest of the gang seem to enjoy 'hippo surfing’ the most. On three separate occasions we have seen this pride of hooligans cling with their front paws onto the bottoms of the terrified running hippos, the lion's back legs bouncing like Pogo sticks behind them. The poor hippos run into a lugga and the lions give up. What has become clear is that these youngsters have yet to learn how to hunt for themselves. Perhaps chasing hippos is a good if rather dangerous way of learning their limitations.

This post written by Tom 'Cakeboy’ Stephens

*Brian is our name for him - he may also have another name

Cattle crisis

Being new to the Mara has been an interesting experience for me in observing the high levels of cattle grazing the plains. Having previously worked in more central Kenya I’m used to seeing livestock and wildlife mixed together but the levels here are quite concerning. Not just because cattle compete with wildlife for grazing but because of the many factors that accompany high levels of livestock. Whether this grazing is the result of the recent drought or whether it is more entrenched is hard to say.

Stray dogs have come past our camp, presumably distantly accompanying a herdsman and his livestock. The dogs may be harmless enough but they can carry diseases such as canine distemper and rabies, which in the past have already wiped out the Mara’s wild hunting dog population and caused a crash in the lion numbers. Diseases carried by domestic animals are a direct threat to all wildlife in the Mara, and threaten the entire ecosystem (and therefore income from tourism).
We’ve seen large herds of cattle inside the reserve both day and night but what we saw last night was most depressing. On our way out filming for the evening we noticed 3 starving and emaciated young cows that clearly abandoned near our camp. When we returned 12 hours later, we made a grisly discovery of around 20 hyenas feeding on all 3 of them. One calf was still alive for a few minutes so there could be no doubt that hyenas had made the kills. But what were the cows doing there? This is not the role hyenas are meant to play in the ecosystem; they should be maintaining the plains game population levels, keeping the fit animals fit with their chasing, as well as taking out sick and diseased animals. There aren’t enough hyenas to do that as well as deal with the inevitable fallout of drought combined with massive overstocking of cattle, sheep and goats.
We’ve come to the Mara to film romping lions and hyenas in their natural environment, let us just hope that this behaviour doesn’t become a common occurrence.

post written by Tom ‘Cakeboy’ Stephens

Working By Starlight

Tom Stephens at work

Life In The Car

Every night we pack our night filming car to the gunnels with 6 cases, 4 car batteries, 2 inverters, 2 desktop computers, 2 custom-built cameras, gallons of tea and a packed dinner that we just about squeeze 3 or 4 people around. Not so much a filming car but a mobile filming office. As you can imagine, now the rains have started, that we’re increasingly anxious about the water-tightness of the car. So far so good however with just one exploded inverter. The rain has become a welcome relief from the dust bath we are used to driving in.

The main challenge of filming at night is navigating around the Mara in total darkness whilst following lions in and out of thick thorn bushes. We don’t use any visible light so our driver Stanley wears night vision goggles and illuminates the road ahead of the car with infra red light. This relaxes the wildlife and prevents creating an unfair advantage for the lions by spotlighting a potential meal.

If we don’t accidentally bump into them, we locate the lions using our thermal camera which can pick out a heat signature from several kilometres away. As we mentioned before in our blog about mistaken identity, this can lead us towards hot rocks and glowing termite mounds but most of the time we find the lions we are looking for. The starlight and thermal cameras are providing us with incredible insight and images of life on the plains at night. I can only compare the experience to SCUBA diving, when you first plunge into the sea and discover it is not full of the sharks that your imagination convinced you were there waiting for you. We have a unique and new view of what is really going on and it is endlessly fascinating to see the plains covered with grazing hippos and romping hyenas once the sun sets.

We have two weeks of filming left to go, who knows what we will find in the dark over these final weeks!

This post written by
Tom ‘Cakeboy’ Stephens

The Sky At Night

Here's a single frame from the starlight camera last night - a dark starry night ie most of the stars obscured by clouds and thin haze over the others reducing their brightness

Most days we set off about 4pm, to find our lions and film whatever we can of their daytime behaviour (you guessed it - mostly sleeping).

Just around sunset, hungry lions will usually move a little to get a better view of the surrounding plains. If they have cubs like the two mothers we followed last night, this is when the youngsters run about chasing, watching anything that moves, playing with stuff they find. Sadly, last night these items consisted of a black plastic bag and a small item of clothing. I’m sure nobody was eaten, but clearly the world has changed for us as well as lions.

Not until darkness closes in do the lions make their move. By this time, we’ve changed from daytime camera to night time cameras. Daytime camera: HD video camcorder - ie one that you put on the tripod, look through the viewfinder and press the button if you like the picture. Night time cameras: a whole other story. For various reasons the cameras we have to use will only record to computers. And laptops aren’t fast enough, so we have two desktop computers in the car running off inverters and car batteries. To see the images, we have a variety small computer monitors placed in strategic positions. The cabling of all this electronic hardware always starts off with the best of intentions but by the end of the night it usually resembles a Gordian knot. We’re working on the cable discipline.

Before we can follow the lions Stanley needs to get his night goggles correctly adjusted, and we have to mark our position on the GPS so at the worst we can back track. Once landmarks disappear into the gloom, it is very easy to become disoriented, especially if a layer of clouds covers the stars.

In this kind of darkness, the Starlight camera can’t see very far without infra red light. Even then, its amazing ability to see animals is completely overshadowed by the thermal camera which allows us to identify lions or hyenas up to three kilometres away. It should therefore be easy keeping up with the lions.

A typical dark night lion hunt will start with a bit of a move, then a bit of a rest, wait and listen, followed by another bit of a move. This night after a couple of starts the two mothers heard something in the bushes and moved quickly towards it. We were in a bad position, and had to go out up onto the hill to see what was going on. A herd of buffalo were coming down to drink, and there in front of them were our two lionesses. One of the buffalo smelt a cat and gave an alarm at which point the entire herd came charging out of the lugga.

Buffalo routinely chase lions in daylight, and present a real danger to the cubs. These two mothers were not starving and so would never attack a healthy buffalo in a herd returning instead to the waiting cubs. This place, with its multitude of dry river beds, luggas and bushes is hard enough to navigate in daylight. Even with the thermal camera we soon lost the lions and the buffalo. So we moved up to the place we now call Lazy Boy Hill (after two lazy male lions) to see if we could find the Monico bunch - or at the least film a bit of starry scenery.

Once I give my eyes time to adjust to the gloom, the beauty of the milky way over the plains never ceases to astound me and is always a small compensation for having lost the lions - again.

The Mara Seven

Suppertime in the Mara

Lion Pride

A month ago when we left there were encouraging signs that the drought was over. Rain had greened-up lots of plains in the Mara, especially the North West. Hardly a drop fell since we left, and the Olare Orok Conservacy is very dry - but there is still good drinking water, so plenty of healthy looking zebras, wildedbeeste, topi and gazelles are hanging around. And there are also plenty of dead cows in various states of decomposition. Many of cattle herds here have been weakened by long treks from other areas in Kenya, where the drought was still having a huge effect. Yesterday, heavy rain hit Nairobi and surrounds, while rain was visible to us over the Northern Serengeti. Hopefully the drought is finally over.

What effect the dryness, all these cattle and accompanying people are having on the lions is hard to say. There have been spearings as well as poisonings, and everyone reports fewer lions in areas where they were common.

The day before yesterday we set off north to Maternity Plain with the help of Sara and Emma Blackburn of the Mara Predator Project to find The Group of Seven; one 3 year old male born in that area, one adult female of unknown provenance, her four 18 month old cubs, 2 boys 2 girls, as well as a smaller adopted cub. This kind of pride doesn’t fit the normal stable lion pride stereotype, but seems to be more common here at the moment, and mature males are thin on the ground.

The Group of Seven set off to towards wildebeeste herds at dusk, and the daughters didn’t disappoint, randomly chasing anything that moved, while mum held back as if to teach them the lesson of patience. The group spread out, chased all the animals away, then reformed for another go. Second time round, the 2 girls produced the same result and all the wildlife legged it.

The night was moonless and partly cloudy, conditions in which neither prey nor lions can see very far, and sound and scent become more important. The lions roughly locate some prey by sound and spread out in that direction. This time, mum decided that playtime was over and had to show the cubs how it was actually done. She knew more or less where the cubs were, and where a sitting herd of wildebeest was quitely chewing its collective cud. Mum made a huge loop around to the other side, careful to keep her footfalls silent, still not sure exactly where the wildebeeste were.

Now the wildebeeste were between her and the cubs who appeared to be waiting for something to happen. Mum charged straight into the middle of the panicking herd, and downed an adult, cheetah-style with a flick to the back legs. It was practically dead by the time the first cub arrived. An hour later, the Group of Seven had devoured the lot, with surprisingly little fighting.

Let’s hope that in time, despite living in a heavily grazed and human inhabited area, the Group of Seven can become a stable and successful pride.

Lions and Cows

We have begun to learn the truth about rampant cattle grazing in the Mara.

The day before yesterday we (me on camera, Stanley on driving) watched some female lions sleeping peacefully as Masai cow bells and voices approached. The cows passed on the other side of the lugga* - and the lions paid no attention at all – then we heard the bell of a single cow trotting after the main herd. The lions leapt into action and hurried after it, behind the bushes. An outsider lioness also arrived, the lionesses had a bit of a spat and the cow escaped.

Later on, we saw some hyenas attacking a wildebeest, oblivious to the nearby Masai and cattle, some lions arrived on the scene commandeering the wildebeest that the hyenas had yet to bring down.

Last night we watched through our thermal camera as The Masai brought their herds closer and closer to where some lions were lounging around in the grass, the lions simply ignored them. We showed the footage to the Masai later, who had been completely unaware of the presence of 5 lions. Between looking at the cattle and sleeping, the lions chased a few hyenas and generally gave the impression that it was business as usual on Paradise plain.

The biggest question that remains is to what extent the cattle grazing damages or enhances the environment. And when the rain will relieve the pressure, and allow these
huge herds to go home.

*Mara term for ditch

Snake Encounter

While the crew are getting to the filming location I thought I'd put up the video made earlier this year in Botswana when a puff adder was discovered in the kit tent (really poisonous and BAD NEWS to get bitten by this chap)

Last Night Filming In Botswana

A quick search of the sandy tracks in the morning showed us that our family of lions had now moved to a spot where it would be impossible to film them, water channels and thick bush meant we had to go elsewhere and find some other animals to film.

We needed shots of impala herds, more elephants and anything else at large in the area

As we came round a bend, a couple of sitting giraffes got up and wandered away from the track and stared in their usual way. This was very interesting as giraffes at night seem to be very hard to find. It could well be because they spend time quietly sitting and ruminating rather than wandering around making themselves a target for predators.

We have seen the same pattern with many animals, springbok, topi, buffalo, oryx, wildebeest, gazelles, spending many of the hours of darkness sitting almost silently, ruminating. The darker the night, the more likely these animals are to be sitting, sleeping even, usually in a tight bunch. And it’s very clear that lions have great difficulty in locating these herds. It would explain why giraffes were so hard to see
at night, these two soon stopped staring and sat down again (an awkward process for giraffes). With the starlight camera, despite bright moonlight, the giraffes were almost impossible to spot, even if you knew where they were, their tall necks looking more like tree trunks. With the thermal camera, we could see them clearly, as well as herd of elephants moving in the background. And we could also see that there weren’t any lions anywhere near us.

That was a fascinating night, free of the pressure of having to find or keep up with lions, we could at last have a good look around, get some much needed shots of other animals featuring in the film, especially impala.

Tomorrow we start the pack...

Walking And Roaring

After following the tracks of our lion family up and down the edge of the swamp, we finally found them. They had walked a good 10 kilometres on the sandy trackroads before settling down in some bushes. As we came round the corner, a warthog (startled by another vehicle) just ran right into them and met a grisly end. The brother of the bloody nosed male appeared out of the undergrowth and sent the females off the kill, while still allowing the cubs to feed. Minutes later there was only a head left, which the male chewed on.

Then, we heard some roaring not far off. Clinton identified this as the bloody nosed male – and his lady companion who roared as well, giving the game away. Our pride all roared back. This went on for an hour or so, the bloody nose male never coming closer than a couple of hundred metres. Shame we didn’t have a decent microphone as the whole car was shaken by the roars all around. You can hear a lion roaring on a still night at least 10 kilometres away. Lions can probably hear it from much further. Either way, at 10 metres it’s an incredible sound.

One little warthog barely touched the sides, and the whole pride were pretty hungry. Now we were going to get some hunting behaviour. Off they set – on the road – stopping looking and listening every few hundred metres. A herd of impala gave itself away with a rustle of a leaf or some noisy cud-chewing, the lionesses spread out in readiness for attack. But in the bright moonlight, one impala spotted the lions and gave an alarm whistle causing the entire herd to leg it – cubs watching all this with interest.

The lions moved on and we continued to follow them for another five kilometres and didn’t see another single animal. With the thermal camera we could be sure there was nothing on the menu out there tonight - the pride gave up and went to sleep. Waking after a couple of hours, the pride continued their journey – South, looking for a large herd of buffalo we guessed. They left us at the edge of thick woodland where we couldn’t follow.

Wildlife In Camp

Usually, after a cold night filming, we need to warm up with a fire before we can sleep, Whisky helps too. In the Kalahari, there was always the chance of a lion or leopard wandering in at this time of night, but that is quite unusual. In Moremi, we often have company, in the form of hyenas. Hyenas aren't present in the Kalahari, but they are ever present at campsites in Moremi. They will try and eat anything, milk cartons, plastic bottles, car exhausts. We could usually pick out a pair of eyes looking back at us while clanking and crunching sounds came from the kitchen area. Needless to say, anything remotely edible was locked away in a steel trunk, but hyenas have an incredible sense of smell and would always give it a go. (Years ago, while filming in Kenya, I was foolish enough to leave my smelly shoes outside the tent one night, in the morning the only evidence that they ever existed were some bits of chewed shoelace). In Moremi, hyenas are rarely seen anywhere apart from camp sites, giving the impression that they are only scavengers of human waste*. This may be true here – we didn’t see a single hyena out and about at night – but the likelihood is that the camp hyenas are mostly lone males.

Yesterday morning, we were also paid a visit by the bloody-faced male and the female he has been hanging out with. He just wandered past camp barely even registering the humans hiding in cars or tents, perhaps too deep in thought considering his situation - encouraging intruders into the range of his own pride - to notice mere cowering humans.

* Hyenas are still regarded as scavengers, despite research showing they are primarily predators.

Driving In Circles

A tip off from a tourist guide finally led us to the lions we wanted to film – well, it was only the cubs – still no sign of the females, but the cubs were looking pretty hungry, and chances of filming hunting behaviour were better than ever. When we returned that evening, the cubs were still there – still no sign of their mums. Just at after sunset, the cubs all ran off – they had heard their mothers calling from the bush, and the whole pride was reunited. Now all we had to do was follow them using the thermal camera. But the whole group promptly set off into thick mopane bush. We did get close to the lions but they just slept for a couple of hours. When they finally woke, they went into even more impenetrable bush – the car got stuck on some logs, and we had to let them go.


Clinton Ewards, a Botswanan wildlife expert working with us, had a good knowledge of this group – and based on his past experience guestimated where they might reappear. And he was right, there they were, looking a bit surprised to see us. But very soon, they headed off into thick forest again. We had to return to camp, cold and dejected. (The weather here is only slightly warmer than the Kalahari, and the Antarctic high pressure is still hanging around.)

The next morning we sent Sondag, the bushman tracker and Korbus, the trainee Dutch Reformist minister off to pick up the trail, to read the morning news printed on the sandy roads. Our family was soon found again. They had done a complete circle.

Bigamous Lion

NB: This post was written 5 days ago but there has not been enough signal to use the sat phone for emailing

The tarmac road to Moremi (the new camp) soon gives way to a hard graded dirt road, the kind of road that would shake most ordinary vehicles to pieces in a matter of hours. The Toyota land cruiser is one of the few vehicles which can put up with this kind of abuse. When we got to the camp, we heard that the one of our vehicles has not only taken the wrong road, but that it has also broken down. We arrived just before sunset to find a half-built camp under a spectacular sausage tree*. There was just time for a quick drive around to look for tracks before dark.

Moremi game reserve borders the Okavango swamp, and like the Okavango sits on a huge flat bed of fine Kalahari sand. Car tracks in these areas offer a perfect substrate for animal tracks. Every morning, the night’s events are easily read, and to a degree timeable. Many of the animals prefer to use the tracks, especially lions, as they offer a silent way of moving around. For us, the tracks give us a quick way of finding our lions. Even if they just cross a road, 9 lions usually leave clear evidence. Any degradation of the tracks, by wind, insects, rain etc allows us to make a good guess as to when the tracks were made.

The next morning, we set off early an very soon found some lions, two females, a full grown male intent on mating with one of the females, and a young male with some kind of severe eye injury. The big male’s face was also bleeding from a huge gash on his nose.

Interesting - but they weren’t the lions we were looking for – they were bloated from recently eating a huge meal and wouldn’t be interested in food for another 4 days or so. The only thing of significance was that the big male with the cut face was apparently two timing. His own pride was the very pride we were looking for, 5 females and 4 cubs - and they would be very annoyed if they knew what he was up to – especially in a place they would regard as their own.

*The Sausage tree is so called because of its enormous sausage-shaped fruits weighing about 10 KG each, loved by elephants but a bit of a menace to smaller animals - baboons have been killed and lions knocked out by these falling fruiteorites.

Beaten Back But Not Defeated

We did get some incredible footage in Deception Valley which fitted our story perfectly, the Kalahari lions are very good looking, one of which we'd christened 'Pretty Boy'.

Generally the Kalahari lions live in smaller groups than in other areas, and seem to fight less among themselves. Most of the lions we met are free of facial scars, and generally all looked in incredible condition.

Sunday morning, we packed up and drove to Maun - mostly a 5-hour slog along the dead straight sand road that runs alongside the veterinary fence*. Yesterday we moved on to Moremi Game Reserve, on the edge of the Okavango Delta. The lions here have a completely different prey base, with buffalo and zebra forming their main food supply. The groups of lions are generally larger, there are more roads and tourists which should make the lions easier to find. On the down side, the grass is longer and the landscape is generally more bushy which could be a problem.



* This is the fence that divides Botswana in two, and was put there at the insistence of the EEC, to ensure that there was no chance of foot and mouth disease or other livestock diseases infecting cattle to the North of the line - so meat products could be exported to the EEC. You should be able to see this fence clearly from space with Google Earth.

Economically, the fence has benefited Botswana, enabling it to export its excellent beef all over the world. It has in some ways helped protect natural areas from incursions by cattle. But the fence also has a big downside. It completely blocks migrations of many grazing animals, many thousands died shortly after the fence was built as their route to fresh grazing was blocked. The long term effects of the fence are still being assessed.

Leaving Deception Valley

It’s not called Deception Valley for nothing.

Camping in the bush is by far the best way to see African wildlife. Being able to examine lion footprints from the night before right outside your tent is exciting enough, but being able to meet some of the smaller creatures; desert mice which nest under the tents (and nibble cables), African wildcats which come to catch the mice, curious hornbills and the African stink ant, one of the largest ants in the world, all contribute to the experience and understanding of how the ecosystem works. But camping is usually best in warmer climates.

Two days ago, another Antarctic front arrived, not that it wasn’t already very cold at night. Now the temperatures dropped to below zero on the valley floor - and when the vehicle moved, the windchill dropped the temperature to as low as -15. This was itself is a major problem for us. The clothing we needed to stay warm was very restricting and batteries of all kinds ceased to function properly. But it was the lions which were our biggest problem now. We noticed with the thermal camera that the tops of the dunes on the valley* edges were a couple of degrees warmer than the valley floor. On very still nights (most nights), a clear thermocline (A clear boundary between gas or liquid of two different temperatures) was visible. Cats don’t like the cold, and it looks as if our lions had disappeared into the dunes - where we can neither film nor follow them - until either the weather warms up, or a breeze breaks up the thermocline and warms the valley floor again. For three days we found no signs of lions that we could film, heard no roaring (one of our main means of finding them), and saw no tracks or kills. It was time to leave the Kalahari...

*Using the term 'valley’ loosely here. The ‘valleys’ around here are usually about a kilometre wide and completely flat on the floor where short grass grows. On either side are fossil sand dunes covered in scrub, which rise as much as 20 metres, but are generally about 10 metres high



these images are made using our image-intensified camera, the 'starlight camera' can film clear images at night using only the light of the stars.