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