When Selinda was Proud.

[Ken Watkins]

A very old image but then it has to be, this contains I believe 13 of the then 25 strong Selinda pride famed for the hunting of Hippos. The 3 beautiful males were absent and the remaining lions and cubs were finishing off a Hippo from the night before. I am glad I have this even if the quality is pretty poor as it is a record of a very unusual period of time. Prides of this size are quite rare and I doubt that the like of it will ever be seen again.

Taken on the Selinda concession, Northern Botswana, 10th November 2002.

EOS D30 Canons first "home grown" digital camera (original file size 1.52mb). Shot in JPEG as then I only had a 1gb IBM microdrive could not afford more than two at over pounds 100 each!

28-105 mm MkI at 38mm

F8, ISO 200, 1/5000

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Ken,
Nice to see an image of that period. I remember the pain of using the IBM Microdrives. One of those fell down from a height of about 2 feet and I had lost a card full of precious images. It still hurts till date. :(

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Rachel Hollander]

Ken - a nice record shot and interesting about the equipment.

TFS,
Rachel

[Egil Droge]

That's one big heap of lions. Impressive! Not a top image as you already stated, but impressive nonetheless.

Maybe prides like this are quite rare but they do still exist.
Here in South Luangwa there are a few big prides. Especially the 'Mwamba Pride' which is usually split up in 2 or 3 subgroups, but alltogether is around 30 strong. One of the subgroups often around 18 animals.
Another one is 'Big Pride' in the main game area. These are 16 animals. That's just the subadults and adult females. Doesn't include the male(s) or cubs...

[Todd Frost]

Nice sighting and history of the area pride. It's interesting to take a look back at where we were equipment wise only a few years ago:).
TFS
Todd

[DanWalters]

Nice wide shot and I like the position of the lions. Might take a little off the bottom.

[Morkel Erasmus]

certainly is a mighty fine sighting...I'm not familiar with this story of lions hunting hippos...how'd they get round to learning to do that? :)

in Kruger you sometimes still get quite sizeable prides between 15 and 20 strong...maybe it has to do with the considerable area that's available to them?

[Harshad Barve]

wow , this is somewhat pride is all about , lovely scene and VWD with kind of equipments you have , Priceless nostalgic image for me :)

TFS

[Ken Watkins]

Thanks to everybody for your kind comments, nice to here there are still some large prides elsewhere.

I agree that is amazing how far everything has come in such a short period, even better is the improvements in processing or my knowlege of how to use it to make these old images work lots better.

This is one of my very few "published" images I gave it to a travel agent to use on his website.

As to how they started to hunt Hippos I have no idea but I am told that the kill is far far worse to see than a Bufallo.

Adrian Bailey was in the area for over six months and as far as I am aware managed to get no usable images of a kill or hunt.

[Egil Droge]

in Kruger you sometimes still get quite sizeable prides between 15 and 20 strong...maybe it has to do with the considerable area that's available to them?

Size of the area available to them has very little to do with pride size.
Pride size mainly seems to be determined by available prey. If a lot of the available prey are large animals (buffalo's etc) the prides are likely to be larger.
With buffalo as main prey the pride size optimum (a relation between hunting effort, risk, food intake) appears to be 6-8 females/pride.
With kudu as main prey the pride size optimum is about 3-4 females/pride.
Another factor influencing pride size is the number of neighbours in neightbouring prides. With more neighbours lionesses are less likely to disperse from their pride, which results in yet a bigger pride.
If lions have large areas available to them, it is more likely that the pride size, or group sizes within the pride, are smaller, as lion density is probably lower because of lower prey densities.

[Marc Mol]

Love the overall scene here Ken, and the detail & colour in the sky too, shame the female on far right has been cut off. Did you get anything wider by chance?
TFS

[Ken Watkins]

Marc,

I have only two images and this is the better one. Card volume was a serious problem in those days:)