Woburn Safari Park - Where It All Started 2003+

This blog post is going to give everyone a bit of a background to the lions featured in this blog. Having been going through all my photo albums I rediscovered these photos kept away for a few years and now having scanned them in, they are now on here for you all to see.

If you look at this page here you will see photos from my first visit to Woburn Safari Park in 2002. The pride back then consisted of two elderly males Romeo and Legs Diamond and two generations of lionesses. Well when Romeo Died in December 2002 and Legs Diamond died in January 2013, new pride leaders needed to be found. In march 2013 brand new males Sly and Shane arrived from Knowsley Safari Park, here is Sly pictured below...

As you can see their arrival was a bloody one, Sly lost the majority of the end of his tail and him and Shane ended up scarred all their lives, within the first few months of their reign all four of the old lionesses died. As can be seen below by one of the girls they stood their ground and gave Sly a good bashing to show the new boys who is in charge. Sly and Shane were really given a good beating by all of the lions, and as you can see by the photos, they never really lost the scars. Sly himself always looked as grizzly as above. Lion prides are extremely stressing and complicated groups to hold, almost impossible to be held perfectly in captivity.

However Sly and Shane were here for a very important reason, they were to be the brand new breeding males keeping the otherwise halted lion pride growing into the next generation. Sly and Shane did eventually fit into the group to make their mark. So it wasn't long before the pitter patter of lion cubs was to be heard.

The first cubs born to mothers Tamby and Amber had to be hand-reared and were sent off to the nearby Linton Zoo and Paradise Wildlife Park. Gladly the next litters of cubs were successful as the pictures below show. The cubs sent to Linton Zoo where Riziki and Karla and their story can be told in the Linton Lions page, their daughter Safi, is one of the 'superstar' lions followed in this blog.

These cubs were born to Tamby in January 2004 and here they are pictured in the reserve as they started to venture out.

As the cubs continued to grow so did the pride numbers, Tamby mothered three litters throughout here lifetime at the park and sadly died last year, however her sister Amber only gave birth to one litter of girls before she died around 2006. The pictures below show Shane and some of the females and young males in the reserve.

 After the death of Sly in 2008 and Shane in 2010, and with the pride females dying the last being Tamby in the Summer of 2012 there are only their cubs left as the Woburn Pride. Eight of the cubs born are still resident at the Safari Park, three castrated male lion brothers live with five females their four sisters and their one cousin. Pictures of this group can be seen from my visit during November 2012 in the morning and the afternoon. This is all that are left of the pride that was started in 2003 and it is going to start once again and with the arrival of Kasanga, hopefully it wont be too many years before cubs are born again.

So this is where it all started and below are two of my favourite photos from this set, Shane showed below with the entire reserve behind him and a young lioness walking through the grass with Sly and Shane in the background with two lionesses.

I hope that you have all enjoyed reading this post, and I was trying to keep it as brief as possible I promise! I hope you all find it interesting.

Cheers

James

Linton Lions - 17/19th April 2013

JAMES IS BACK...

Hello everyone!

Massive apologies for the huge lack of posting recently, for those of you who read my twitter page or like the facebook page you will know that I have recently suffered an appendicitis. Unfortunately this meant that I had to take two weeks off work, but even worse than that it coincided exactly with the Easter Holidays. This meant that all the lion talks that I had planned went completely down the drain. However I am now very pleased to announce that the talk will now take place during weekends at 2 in the afternoon as is seen in the sign below.

If any of the readers wish to visit Linton Zoo, please feel free to attend these talks and I will be more than happy to talk to you afterwards. Here at Linton Zoo we are also in the process of major fundraising activities for Lion Guardians, in which we sponsor a Masai Tribesman who is currently monitoring and saving lions in their homeland. 

This brand new talk started by myself aims to give all of the visitors a background and history to the lions of Linton as well as a look of their situation and behavior in the wild, ending with what we are doing to save these magnificent creatures and how you can help.

If you are interested in visiting Linton Zoo please feel free to check their website.

As all of you can imagine I did miss the lions a hell of a lot and I could not wait to go back and see them. All of them are still in perfect health and below are a few photos that I took during last week on my visits after I finish to go and see them.

17th April 2012

As the evenings are a lot cooler for the lions, this is when they are most active. As it is (finally!) started to warm up, they are spending the majority of the day resting. Favourite spots are ontop of their hill or nestled between the two hills towards the back of their enclosure. They make good use of the landscaping in their enclosure and they love to see the sights from their hills. Their enclosure has one several BIAZA Awards for its landscaping, it has certainly given a very modern look to this previously unoccupied paddock in the zoo.

As you can see Zuri and Safi spend most of their evenings wandering around, their pacing by the fence is not stereotypical behavioiur in a bad sense it is a natural way of patrolling a territory, also especially at this time of day they are generally waiting for me or the zoo owner to come and see them, and as I walk up the path I can generally see their heads waiting for me by the corner of their house to see who is approaching.

I love going to see the lions when I finish, it is definately one of the highlights of being a zookeeper especially when the weather is fine like it has been, no way better to spend a sunny evening! The lions are also more vocal this time of the day to myself, Zuri especially giving his moany groany welcome noises. Communication between the two pairs is also frequent and roaring does occur most evenings between Zuri and Riziki, with Safina and Karla giving their boys some reassurance too! 

 19th April 2012

It is great to see the lions when they are this active, quite often if they are in the right moods they bound across the enclosure playing with eachother. Safina is often the one to trigger this and Zuri is the one who is quite reluctantly used as the target in her games. She loves to paw at his feet and chase him round in circles to try and jump on his back. Zuri does not find this very enjoyable too, and does tend to have a bit of pathetic 'help me' puzzled face on during these moments!

This is one of my particular favourites from this set of photos. His mane really blends superbly well with his face, giving a profile of a huge face. This is probably a very logical reason for the lighter mane around the face, so in the distance it will look like they have huge faces, hopefully scaring opponents away, however daft they may seem! Yes I am talking about Zuri!

Below is a picture of Riziki and Karla taken during this evening, both of them seemed very surprise to have someone coming to see them after zoo opening hours as they both gave me very startling looks. Both of them where sat by the fence, soaking up the sun, they're not as energetic as the other two, well not when I see them they are not!

During my time off work, it enabled me to piece together a lot of my records and photos. I have now made two full size books containing all my pictures and records from Woburn Safari Park and Paradise Wildlife Park Lions Turkana and Mana. For those of you who read this blog all the time you will know that Riziki and Karla were born at Woburn Safari Park so it has been especially interesting for me looking at photos of their parents and ancestors. These pictures will be up on the blog very soon, and i'm sure that you will all enjoy a little bit of lion history!

I hope that you have all enjoyed reading this post, and weekly posting will now begin as normal, as I will make sure that photos are taken at every opportunity.

And once again if anyone who does live locally who feels like seeing these lions in the flesh please feel free to visit, if it is during a week day I will do my best to see you in person, if you tell the gate that you are wishing to see me, if it is during a weekend I shall be there to do the lion talk and answer any questions afterwards.

Cheers

James