Camera Critters: Serengeti Lions

For Camera Critters last week, I posted photos of a lumbering animal not always considered beautiful. My fondness for contrast led me to choose this series of shots for today...

for surely, there are few animals as magnificent, graceful and wondrous as the African lion.

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Crossing from Kenya into Tanzania, our drive took us past a tall cluster of rocks where

a young pair of lions basked in the sun-baked afternoon.

The male's youth showed in his short mane that had not yet come into its own, but already he was embracing his role in the pride. Adult males sleep for up to twenty hours a day, leaving the tasks of both childrearing and hunting to the females, rousing themselves only to feed first on the game dragged home to them. 

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Clearly, the pair had fed recently...the male soon dozed off in spite of our truck parked a short distance away with us looking on in fascination.

True to form, the female remained watchful, keeping a careful eye on us even as she scanned the wide open plain around their raised pedestal....her vigilance a guarantee that no threat or possibility would escape notice...

I used my telephoto lens for these shots, since the lions' perch was a distance away. from the rutted road.

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Keeping a distance is paramount. We must always remain mindful to tread carefully and respectfully in this fragile environment which we are priviliged to explore.

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This is their home...has always been their home. We may only peer in briefly from the edges, leaving all as we found it and taking out nothing but memories.

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And the memories are like no other. I write this post on a gray muddy day half a world away from the African continent...yet I need only close my eyes to feel that sultry sun soak into my skin as a young lion's golden head nods ever lower, until at last, he succumbs to sleep...

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I'm linking this to Misty Dawn's wonderful Camera Critters! To see more critters from around the world, check out the link below...

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 http://camera-critters.blogspot.com/