Serengeti National Park encompasses 5,700 square
miles of grassy plains and woodlands near the northern border of
Tanzania, and is home to more than 3,500 lions grouped into a couple
dozen prides. Photographer Nick Nichols and videographer Nathan
Williamson made several extended trips to the Serengeti between July
2011 and January 2013, determined to break new visual ground in their
coverage of the Serengeti Lion. The pair used cameras mounted on small
remote-control vehicles to make images up close and at low angles, as
well as hand-held cameras for both day and nighttime shots. Nichols shot
242,000 images and Williamson recorded 200 hours of video, often while
lying on the floor of a specially outfitted Land Rover.
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| Hildur, C-Boy's partner, frequently makes
a long run to visit the Simba East pride. A coalition that controls two
prides must maintain vigilance over both. |
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| Dry season is hard on everyone. Vumbi
females, stressed and fiercely protective of their young, get cross with
C-Boy, though he's one of the resident fathers. |
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| Cubs of the Simba East pride: too young
to kill but old enough to crave meat. Adult females, and sometimes
males, do the hunting. Zebras and wildebeests rank high as chosen prey
in the rainy season. |
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| C-Boy mates with a Kibumbu pride female.
After fathering cubs, a resident male can be displaced by other males.
His young offspring will then be killed by the new males or left to die.
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| C-Boy and a Vumbi female relax between
matings. During estrus a female may be monopolized for days by a single
male consort. Dark manes correlate with robustness, and dark-maned studs
like C-Boy are preferred. |
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| A male often asserts his prerogatives.
C-Boy feasts on a zebra while the Vumbi females and cubs wait nearby,
warned off by his low growls. Their turn will come. |
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| The Vumbi females -- their pride name is
Swahili for "dust" -- kill a warthog they've dragged from its burrow.
Such small meals help bridge the lean, hungry, dry season, when cubs may
otherwise starve. |
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| The Vumbis rest on a kopje, or rocky
outcrop, near a favorite water hole. Lions use kopjes as havens and
outlooks on the plains. When the rains bring green grass, wildebeests
arrive in vast herds. |
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| Photographer Nick Nichols made several
extended trips to the Serengeti between July 2011 and January 2013,
determined to break new visual ground in the coverage of the Serengeti
Lion. Here, C-Boy, a dark-maned male lion defending his interests,
confronts the peril of lion-on-lion violence on a daily (and nightly)
basis. Four years ago, C-Boy barely survived a fight for dominance with
three other males. |