We saw lion cubs at each of the four camps that we visited. This photo was taken at the last camp, just north of the Masai Mara. Only about a month old, this little guy was very curious as to what we were all about.

This is Notch. He’s one of the best known lions in the Masai Mara because he controls an enormous territory. He’s been the alpha male of his pride for a long time, thanks in large part to all his sons who protect him from any challengers. He’s also well known for his ongoing role in the BBC nature series “Big Cat Diary,” which chronicles the lives of cats within the Mara. It was quite a majestic sight to see him walking across the savannah, barely looking at us as he passed a mere foot or so in front of our vehicle. His advanced age of 14 years is evident in the impressive black and gold mane.

The short rains occur in Kenya from October through the beginning of December. To me, this is the perfect time to visit. As mentioned in a previous post, the landscape is lush with green vegetation, the skies are filled with dramatic clouds and the occasional rain showers provide interesting opportunities to photograph the wildlife. This is an olive baboon in the Laikipia area of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. I spent about an hour photographing a large troop of these guys and captured quite a few similar water shake offs.

This white rhinoceros calf was probably my single favorite animal that I saw in Kenya. She seemed to be in a very playful mood and was making all sorts of faces at us while her mother, for the most part, ignored our presence and continued to graze. We saw plenty of both white rhinos and black rhinos. Both species are endangered, but are quite plentiful in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy which was established for their protection.

First thing in the morning is usually the best time to catch hippos out of the water. During the day, they need to stay out of the sun and in the water to keep their skin from burning. Our tent in the Masai Mara was set on the bank of a river just above a hippo pool and at night we could hear them snorting and gurgling and making all sorts of noises. We encountered this guy one of those early mornings just outside of our camp.

There really aren’t  many things in nature much cuter than a cheetah cub. I like the way that this little guy looks like he’s wrapped in a cheetah cape. Most of those spots around him are his mother’s, but hiding down to the left is also a little brother (or perhaps a sister).

I used a small aperture on my long lens to get the rays of the sun to flare and shine a spotlight on this hyena as it headed out for a night of scavenging. Contrary to popular belief, however, hyenas aren’t just scavengers. We witnessed several as they unsuccessfully chased after newborn antelope calves. It seems that the spotted hyena will get its food by any means possible. This photo was taken on the last night of our safari in the Olare Orok concession of the Masai Mara reserve.

Spotting — and more importantly — being able to get decent pictures of a serval in the wild was definitely one of the highlights of my trip to Kenya. It was the second to last night of our two week safari and we were returning to camp after having finally photographed a leopard, completing the big five for this particular trip (leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We were feeling good about the leopard sighting and all of a sudden things got even better when I saw the serval crouched in the grass by the side of the road. She wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding in the short grass, like a child holding fingers in front of her face, thinking that we couldn’t see her. Realizing that we were on to her, she cautiously raised up before taking a few slow steps, then a few quicker ones, and then a full on sprint into the thicker grass. This shot was one of those first few slow steps. I also got nice shots of her leaping away. I was so excited because servals are rarely seen, and being nocturnal, when they are spotted, it’s usually at night. It was, however, getting pretty dark when I took this picture, but I was able to crank up the ISO and avoid using flash thanks to the last remaining light of the day. Servals are medium sized spotted and striped cats, with a smallish head to body ratio, long legs and large, close set ears.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there were tons of babies of all species running around Kenya at this time of year. These are reticulated giraffes that we came across at our first camp in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. Although we saw  quite a few baby giraffes, we didn’t see much interaction like this. In fact, giraffes are notoriously bad mothers, often forgetting that they even have babies and wandering off while the little ones are left to catch up. When born, the babies can already be up to six feet tall.

I returned early this morning from my trip to Kenya. Overall it was a great two weeks, with plenty of outstanding photo opportunities and new species like rhino, serval and gerenuk to photograph. This is the time of the short rains in Kenya so everything was nice and green. And babies were everywhere — like these two bat-eared fox pups. I had tried photographing bat-eared foxes in Botswana but could never get close enough. They are very skittish and usually run before you can get within range for frame filling photos. In Kenya, it was the same, but I kept trying and finally got these month-old pups to let their curiosity get the best of them. I took many photos as they played around the den, but liked this symmetrical portrait best, almost as if they are Siamese twins coming from the same furry body. In a future post I’ll send the mother with the pups so you can see just how small these little guys are.