When Lions feast on a fresh kill it is rather a bloody affair. This young Lion just got his first share of a Kudu kill.
A strong image showing the rough side of nature!
My favorite 2015 Lion image
If you followed my blog for a while you will know that I love to take animal portraits. Nevertheless my favorite Lion images for 2015 is a scenery image.
It was taken on Christmas Eve on Thanda Private Game Reserve. It is not a prefect photograph (with the slight lens/light distortions), but it just looks right!
Christmas Eve in the South African Bush :-)
Christmas Eve Greetings from the African Bush 🙂
The first decade series – Lion Hanky Panky
Another unpublished image from my archives 🙂
Bloody Face!
One of my favorite animal portraits – This Lioness just finished her Giraffe dinner (first course!) – The Lions must have killed the Giraffe just minutes before we arrived, judging by the color of the blood.
New York Times
One of my images was published in the New York Times on 27 October 🙂
PANTHERA – Post on 27 October 2015
‘Pick up your copy of The New York Times today and flip to page A11 to read about a study co-authored by Panthera and published yesterday that unveils new findings on declining lion populations in key regions of Africa.
You can also catch up on the NYTimes article online @ http://nyti.ms/1POYIU4 and read Panthera President Dr. Luke Hunter’s explanation on the far-reaching impact of the catastrophic loss of Africa’s lions: “You start pulling at the threads of these big complicated ecosystems, and they start unraveling.”
Learn what Panthera is doing across Africa to protect one of our planet’s most celebrated species @ http://bit.ly/1N37dZM.
Special thanks to Christian Sperka Photography and Nick Garbutt Wildlife Photography for the generous use of their lion photos in this feature!’
Organization! (2)
I am working on organizing all the Wildlife images, which I took between 2001 and 2010. This is a major undertaking which will take me many month.
But one of the rewards of this -sometime tedious – work is that I find some good images I have never published before. Here is one of them. Three hunting Lionesses.
Sorry to say, but there will be no further wildlife posts for the next two weeks. I will be back on Thanda on 8 November.
Mating Eyes
When Lions mate they are actually busy for multiple days with a copulation every twenty to thirty minutes. In the breaks the male and the female keep eyes each other.
I love these two images which I took during such an intermission. An alert gentlemen and a lady giving him a stern look!
What is he looking at?
Have a guess what Thanda’s dominant male is looking at in this picture!
Thanda Cats
Watching Africa’s iconic large cats – Lion, Leopard and Cheetah – is always a special treat on any safari. But these three sighting were even more exciting than usual. First we saw Thanda’s dominant male Lion mating with the oldest female of the Mduna pride. Then we observed a young Cheetah female doing what Cheetahs ‘never do’, climbing up a tree trunk. And last but not least we sat with a relaxed and very beautiful male Leopard for quite a while, in broad day light!
A pleasure for the Thanda guests and great picture opportunities for all Wildlife photographers among them!
Christian Sperka Photography | Custom Luxury Tours 