BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART I
THE DENIZEN OF SHADOWS: COMMEMORATING HALF-TAIL AND ZAWADI
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Diary 1996, Series 1 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 1 – "1996: A Leopard Called Half-Tail"
Date of Release: 1 May 2023
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Commemorating the second series of The Big Cat People Podcast, entitled Big Cat Diary Uncut. It has to be said, BBC's magnum opus completed its decade-long journey in October 2008, still, its enigma stands out as a remarkable parameter of reality television. When the first series of Big Cat Diary went on air in October 1996, an individual stood out as the real showstopper of that particular series, and for the subsequent series to come—the legendary Half-Tail! Still, she is quite a relevant name to be reckoned with. In the tourscape of Mara, lions and cheetahs are very fundamental queries to catch up—often, not a big deal to track down. But tracing out the sinuous rosettes is a different deed altogether. If you lose your attention for a moment, the leopard will give you an obvious slip, prompting you to commence the quest right from the beginning. Thanks to Half-Tail, and her dynamic daughter, Zawadi, a Swahili word for "gift," (narrated as Shadow for the Big Cat Diary audience) for making the first four series of Big Cat Diary so happening and eventful. Had there not been photogenic presence of Half-Tail, the success of Big Cat Diary would have definitely been on the verge.
Stand for the elusive leopards with all conservation ethics to secure an illuminating future for them, and for us as well so that we may be able to grapple with the unresolved mystery of these supreme felines, slinking amidst the sunlight and shadows.
RESUMING THE VOYAGE: INTRODUCING "QUEEN" OF THE PLAINS
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Diary 1998, Series 2 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 2 – "1998: Amber the Cheetah and the Battle at Bila Shaka"
Date of Release: 8 May 2023
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Commemorating the second series of The Big Cat People Podcast, entitled Big Cat Diary Uncut. Every year, the BBC Natural History Unit curtailed the budget for the production of the series with the aim in mind to complete the filming within the more stipulated span. However, for numerous reasons, the second series of Big Cat Diary turned out to be the longest one, consisting of a total of ten programmes in all. Simon King introduces the audience to an adult female cheetah called Amber. The stipulations of the sequences of the events and actions do not often allow one to share some of the crucial backstage details. Amber was one of the cubs who was born in a litter of five, back in 1987. A few months after their birth, Amber's mother was seen hunting in Leopard Gorge, the last area that a cheetah should be in. The consequence was almost destined. Her mother got mortally injured, probably by a leopard, and Amber and her siblings were fed by the rangers till they were adults. Amber, as she appeared in this series of Big Cat, clung to her old custom of climbing up the filming and safari vehicles. So did her cubs—two well-grown aggressive males and a female.
The Big Cat team had kept an eye on the rough and tumble of the lives of the leopard stars too. This year, there was a new addition. Half-Tail had moved to the area called Moses Rock (named after the guide, Moses Manduku), nurturing her two new five-month-old offspring—one male and one female. Zawadi (Shadow) proved herself eminently capable of living on her own. The Marsh Pride, however, offered some of the most dramatic sequences. None of us can really forget the harrowing encounter of the lionesses with a herd of buffalo. In the tragic aftermath of the distress, one of the eleven cubs died. It was a surprise that a major number of cubs survived the ordeal. Perhaps, they would preoccupy a more cautious outlook whenever their nemesis would be on the horizon. Catch up on the brilliantly narrated encapsulation of the second series. It is indeed a sheer joy that we are still celebrating and commemorating the lives of these big cats to conjure up a greater aura of care and concern that is eventually substantial for the current needs of conservation.
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART III
A FAMILIAL UPHEAVAL AND KNOCKING ON THE NEIGHBOURS' DOORS
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Diary 2000, Series 3 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 3– "2000: The Rise and Fall of Scar and the Story of Solo"
Date of Release: 16 May 2023
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Commemorating the second series of The Big Cat People Podcast, entitled Big Cat Diary Uncut. The year 2000 proved to be a tough one because of the draught, due to El Niño. This meant that Mara would be a hotspot of activities for the big cats since the great migration tended to gravitate towards the Marsh, one of the exclusive spots of water bodies. The Marsh Pride was on the verge of a grave transition. Of the ten surviving cubs of the ordeals of buffalo attack, back in 1998, eight adolescents survived—six females and two males. From the original five females—Old Girl, Bump Nose, Kali, Notch and Blondie, now they were down to three, losing Old Girl and Blondie in an encounter with the Maasai herdsmen. Scruffy too was speared alongside a female from another pride with whom he courted in the areas called Big Wood and Maternity, leaving Scar to rely on the combined strength of the eight adolescents. Kali's young cubs were killed by the invading Topi Plains Males, namely, Blondie and Simba, who would have to go on to be two of the powerful forces to be reckoned with.
In March or April 1999 prior to the series, Half-Tail was killed as a consequence of retaliation with the Maasai ranchers as she tried to snatch livestock from their boma. This meant a huge loss to the Big Cat crew. Meanwhile, the 2000 series turned out to be the starting of a new millennium as Zawadi (Shadow) was having a cub, an 11-month-old female called Safi, which literally means "the clean one" in ancient Arabic. Zawadi had a battle royale in terms of protecting Safi from an invading male, famously known as Droopy Jaw. However, Simon King was reunited with Amber the cheetah—alone, having no responsibility of raising cubs this time. He also caught up with a neighbouring male called Kimbia and towards the end of the series, there happened to be a paradoxical encounter of caution and flirtation between Kimba and Amber's daughter, the female cub whom the audience have seen in the 1998 series. Jonathan Scott caught with Solo, a 3-month-old single lion cub from the Ridge Pride. The Ridge Pride, consisting of a total of as many as twenty-one individuals, was having the peak time that defines the solidarity of a lion pride. Catch up with the brilliant recapitulation of the third series of Big Cat Diary here, by visiting the aforementioned link.
The Trinity of Big Cat Diary: Simon King, Saba Douglas-Hamilton and Jonathan Scott
Photo Credit: Angela Scott
Maasai Mara, Kenya
September 2002
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART IV
A NEW FACE AROUND THE CAMPFIRE
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Diary 2002, Series 4 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 4 – "2002: Cubs Galore – Marsh Pride, Honey and Zawadi"
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
Date of Release: 23 May 2023
As per the suggestion of Fiona Pitcher, the series producer, Saba Douglas-Hamilton joins the Big Cat Crew, conjuring up a new aura for the entire series, and for the next successive series to come. Born and brought up in an enlightened ancestry, Saba turned out to be the obvious choice to chronicle the lions' tale in Big Cat Diary. The situations are now drastically different for the Marsh Pride of Lions. Blondie and Simba have now estimated themselves as the pride males, showcasing their extensive range of confidence and solidarity. The survivors of the buffalo attack of 1998, White Eye, Mumma Lugga (Red), Bibi, the Blonde Sisters—Lispy and Split Nose and Nusu Nusu are now the nucleus of the Pride, backed up by Kali (Bibi's mother) and Notch, the two 12-year-old elder generation females. White Eye and Mumma Lugga, at the age of four, are now bringing up their own cubs in the Bila Shaka Lugga (meaning "without fail" for the obvious chances of lion sightings there). A total of seven cubs are now in the crèch, providing an ideal situation of the crux of the storyline for a television soap like this.
With Amber dead, Simon King and the Cheetah Crew are now on the verge of venturing out to Mara Triangle, situated on the west side of the Mara River. Two female cheetahs are now reported to be regularly sighted. Simon decides to concentrate on one of them and rechristens her Honey for her beautiful honey-coloured eyes. Honey has to be a tough mother on the block because, at the age of nearly four, she is having the responsibility of raising three cubs—two males, who would be known as Borris and Bruno, and a female called Cleopatra. In this series, the audience is to witness a nerve-wracking encounter between Honey and a male lion who rather shows a vague interest in Honey's cubs. Jonathan Scott catches up with some of the golden moments with Zawadi, who is now having three tiny toddlers at Leopard Gorge, one of the very same areas where she raised Safi before this litter. Also, he is reunited with Solo, the star of the last Big Cat Diary, who, now is backed up by one of his slightly elder cousins from the Ridge Pride, looking forward to hold on the grip over a territory of his own.
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART V
THE CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE TALEK QUEEN
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Week 2003 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 5 – "2003: Kike's Story and Bella the Leopard "
Date of Release: 6 June 2023
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Jonathan Scott took over the cheetah story in 2003 for substantiating and illustrating the third book, called Big Cat Diary Cheetah, which was published two years later after this series by Harper Collins. Big Cat Week 2003 proved to be an annus mirabilis in the history of filming the series. The regular weekly format of a comfortable Sunday afternoon slot on BBC2 was shifted to a week-long broadcast. It was to be stripped across a single week in a prime-time slot at 7 pm, 30 minutes before the soaps. Kike turned up on the scene as a new feline profile of the show. Like Amber before, Kike was stupendously confident around the filming and the tourists' vehicles and eventually took advantage of them by using them as a vantage point for scanning the plain, looking for probable predators and prey animals. Her flamboyance around the cars and the area she occupied prompted many people to assume her to be Amber's daughter, not to be confused with Amber's female offspring who was filmed in 1998 along with her siblings and in 2000, scrapping with Kimbia the adult male. Now, Kike's three cubs—two females and a male—were about 9 months old, immune enough to be safe from the attacks from bigger predators like lions, leopards and hyenas. Whether they could make it to independence was a real deal to observe. None of us can really forget the moment when Kike jumped up on Jonathan Scott's vehicle after being chased by angry female topi as she tried to snatch her cub.
With the closure of the Mara River Camp, the areas such as Leopard Gorge and Fig Tree Ridge became less frequented by tourists. Eventually, Zawadi (Shadow) got more and more elusive to be tracked down. Finally, when the 2003 series began, she was nowhere to be seen. In 2000, when she and Safi got briefly veiled in the bushes, the leopard crew came across an adult female and her 6-month-old female cub in the Talek River area. Now, they would have to go on as two of Big Cat's most enduring stars, Bella and Olive. This time, it was the time for the emergence of the Talek queen, Bella. Saba Douglas-Hamilton engaged herself with the leopard story this year. Bella was having two tiny 3-month-old cubs—one male and one female to raise. Within the stipulated and modified timetable of Big Cat Week, Bella and her cubs turned out to be the nucleus of the happenings. Meanwhile, Simon King was reunited with the old friends of Big Cat Diary— the Marsh Pride. With twenty-nine individuals prowling on the horizon, the Marsh Pride happened to be the family at its peak. But, there was obviously a shady side behind this apparent frame of contentment. Blondie, the older of the Topi Plain Pride males or Blonde Males was killed by a cantankerous bull buffalo as the pride attempted to maul it on one unfortunate night. Simba was completely on his own with the huge responsibility to defend his extended family and territorial turf. Two new younger males moved into the Marsh territory, causing trouble for Simba, pushing him at the edge of his range but Simba had age and experience on his side, so it definitely seemed to be an indecisive battle. Bibi turned out to be an outcast for the moment for having two tiny cubs—one male and one female alongside her while most of the Marsh Pride cubs were by then one year to one and a half years of age.
Little Sala greeting one of the adult males of the Ridge Pride
Photo Credit: Jonathan and Angela Scott
Maasai Mara, Kenya
September 2004
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART VI
REMEMBERING THE "ODD COUPLE"
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Week 2004 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 6 – "2004: The Ridge Pride – Sala and Cheza, and Bella and Chui" "
Date of Release: 14 June 2023
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
The last series of Big Cat Week proved to be a tremendous success in terms of its style of presentation and drawing the audience all over the world. At the beginning of the 2004 series, Jonathan Scott turned out to be absolutely involved with the progress of the three cheetah youngsters—Kike's three cubs—two females and one male, whom the crew followed in the last series. While recapitulating the moments, Scott also questions his fanatic integration with the cubs since whatever was presented to us was purely wild. This litter of Kike, however, turned out to be her first surviving progeny. Before this litter, Kike was not able enough to raise any cub to adulthood. At one point, one of the female cubs' nostrils got hooked up in a thornbush, which ultimately got free. This young female was put amidst every possible odd in the trials and tribulations. By the end of the series, the cubs' proximity to the Maasai herdsmen turned out to be a real cause of worry to the crew, but eventually, they tended to come back to the safety of the reserve, taking down wild prey animals to survive and prove their worth. Meanwhile, last year, it took a whole week to figure out the presence of a leopard, but this time, Chui, Bella's 15-month-old subadult son, turned up on the scene, and together with his mother, he offered a great deal of boisterous actions to the audience of Big Cat Diary. His sister, who was named Nitito by the guides, went missing six months before the commencement of the series, and probably got killed by a lion.
For the first time in the history of Big Cat, the Marsh Pride was not featured. 2004 was the time when the Marsh lions were going through that phase of transition, which every lion pride experiences at certain times. Simon King and the producers had their homework done. The segment of Ridge Pride of lions, whom the lion crew was concentrating on, were primarily the young relatives of the Marsh Pride, who turned out to be a splinter group. With the presence of two magnificent adult males, a sisterhood of seven females, and four feisty adolescents, the stars of the Ridge Pride—Cheza and Sala were thriving leaps and bounds. The 2-month-old Sala was the only surviving cub among his siblings, and apart from his mothers, Sala's closest buddy was Cheza, his 7-month-old elder cousin. Following the lead of a bigger cub can sometimes lead to danger, and this time, at the beginning of the series, Sala got straight into trouble amidst a huge herd of buffaloes. After a debacle of a few hours, the buffaloes went off, and the next morning, Sala was found intact. Their story, however, was featured in detail in one of the subsequent episodes of Big Cat Diary: Family Histories.
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART VII
TOTO AND DUMA – THE SPIRITS OF SURVIVAL
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Week 2005 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 7 – "2005: Honey and Toto"
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
Date of Release: 19 June 2023
With the stupendous coordination with team Planet Earth, the 2005 series of Big Cat Week proved to be a real rollercoaster. The scenic aerial frames of the vehicles of the trinity of the presenters turned up on the screen, each searching for our special big cat families. Once again, Simon King would be looking for the magnanimous one of the big cats—the lions. He was absolutely delighted to be reunited with some of the most familiar faces of Big Cat—the Marsh Pride. The lash of sequential destiny, so far, had been playing a harsh role in the aura of the coalition males. Every time in the history of the past two coalitions, one of the pride males perished, either due to a clash with the Maasai herdsmen, as happened with Scruffy, back in 1999; or by having a debacle with a cantankerous bull buffalo, as happened with Blondie, in May 2003. However, this time, the same fate would have to go on to prove its natural recurrence with a different dimension altogether. Simba, the previous pride male was nowhere to be seen, and a completely new guardian—Notch had successfully estimated himself at the throne of the Marsh Pride. Yet again, destiny dwarfed the much-needed confidence and affirmation of Notch. He did have a coalition partner, whom the guides and the tourists had fondly called Light Male. A few months before the start of the series, he was attacked and killed by three adult males from the Paradise Plains. Despite having harassment by the two new interlopers, or by being distracted by the flirtatious encounter with a young female (who would go on to be Tamu in the next series), Notch, somehow, kept a low profile and went on to be one of the most successful providers for the family.
The intrepid Saba Douglas-Hamilton was searching for the elusive leopards, and this time in Big Cat Week, Bella turned up on the scene, not with any new litter of the cubs, but with his full-grown mischievous son, Chui (a Swahili word for a leopard). Saba and her crew had an exciting journey with Big Cat Week's two of the most enduring leopard stars. Once again, Jonathan Scott was on the tow of the cheetahs. Surprisingly, a tiny eight-week-old fluffy little cub had stolen the hearts of millions of Big Cat Diary viewers, to whom the tiny cub was introduced as Toto. 'Toto' is a Swahili word for 'the little one', and in this harsh predicaments of the wilderness, where Toto's mother had a battle royale to keep her only son alive, Toto is like as vulnerable as anything out there in the plains. Alongside numerous threads of uncertainty that take place off-camera on a daily basis, two massive occurrences turned out to be the nerve-wracking signposts for this year's Big Cat Week. At one point, Toto was left out in the open in Paradise Plains and two big male baboons eventually moved in. With an apparent disinterest in their move, and having Toto's mother hackles raised on the horizon, they did not prove to be a potential threat for the cub. A few days later, those three adult male lions from Paradise Plain, who killed Notch's coalition partner, turned up on the scene as the darkness of the night broke into dawn. They seemed to have caught the scent of the cheetahs around the very same place where the mother and the cub used to take shelter, but, to everyone's immense relief, they were hankering after the lionesses from their own pride.
To everybody's delight, Honey turned out to be identified as Toto's mother. She was having one of her previous litters of cubs in the Mara Triangle when she was featured in the fourth series of Big Cat Diary, back in 2002. But, this time, she crossed the river and came to the east—to the predator-infested areas of the Paradise Plains and Rhino Ridge. In her own terms of Savannah, everyone's haunch was turning out to be fixed with the conviction of Toto's survival when they got introduced to the adolescent female, Duma (a Swahili word for a cheetah), being accompanied by her mother, Shakira. Big Cat Diary: Family Histories chronicled the story of Duma alongside the contrary references to Toto hereafter. To the cheetah crew's much delight, Kike turned up on the scene, being frantically followed by a male, giving Jonathan Scott and Warren Samuels prolonged hours of sustained waiting and swiftly missed the occasion of courtship at the end. The word 'jeopardy' turned out to be at its climax when the entire Big Cat crew were called for searching little Toto as he and Honey went missing. But, the team was losing light. Eventually, they had to draw the curtain with a sorrowful endnote that two days after they left the Mara, Honey was found, but without little Toto. Nobody could exactly decipher what happened to him, but to put it euphemistically, the odds were always stuck against him.
Tamu after being reunited with her cubs
Photo Credit: Jonathan and Angela Scott
Maasai Mara, Kenya
September 2006
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART VIII
TAMU'S CUBS – JEOPARDY ON THE PLAINS
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Week 2006 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 8 – "2006: A Lioness Called Tamu"
Date of Release: 28 June 2023
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
It is Big Cat Week 2006. Ten years ago, back in 1996, when Big Cat Diary was aired for the first time on television, none of the crew anticipated any potential future of the ongoing series, let alone any exponential growth of the programme as a canon of wildlife soap. A 10th-anniversary special broadcast was on the air, namely, Big Cat: The Big Story, beautifully narrated and synced by Liza Turbuck with the enormous recapitulations from Jonathan Scott, Simon King and Saba Douglas-Hamilton—the trinity of Big Cat Diary. The Big Story ended with a promise of a comeback, and here the crew returned in September 2006 with two strong parallelism of motherhood—Tamu the lioness, and Honey the cheetah. It may well be a reminiscence of the 2003 series when the audience got to see the struggle of two epitomes of "Mother Courage," Bibi the lioness from the Marsh Pride, and Kike, believed to be Amber the cheetah's daughter.
Jonathan Scott was on the trail of the cheetah story once again, and with quite enthusiasm, he introduced that a mother cheetah had been spotted on the west side of the Mara River known as Mara Triangle. Everybody was hoping that this could be Honey, Toto's mother. Like the daily basis of routine, as followed by Simon in 2002, Jonathan and the cheetah crew headed to the west towards where the cars were parked to catch up with the cheetah family. However, Cut to Simon King, who was back on the trails of the lions, and eventually was delighted to watch a thriving family frame of the Marsh Pride. Notch was still in charge, turning out to be incredibly successful to survive and hang on with the pride despite the disadvantages of being a lone pride male. His four matriarchs—White Eye, Red (Mumma Lugga), Bibi and Lispy were the core of the pride, and all the eight cubs—five males (the coalition that would be known as Notch's Boys) and three females (the famous "Three Graces,"—Sienna, Joy and Charm) were made it to adolescence. Tamu (a Swahili word for "the beautiful one") was the only lioness, who was living at the heart of the Marsh Pride territory, raising four cubs on her own, facing tremendous hurdles in the form of three of the five adolescent males from the Pride, a rouge adult male lion who eventually killed one of her cubs, and the adult Marsh Pride females.
Back to Jonathan and the cheetah crew, to everyone's utter surprise, Honey had become the mother to four new cubs, considerably her fourth litter—three males and one female. As a matter of lurking tragedy of jeopardy, immediately after the first day of filming, the female cub was killed, most probably by a lion. Honey went on to raise her three boisterous sons to adulthood (who would famously become the triadic group of "Honey Boys," to be featured in the next recapitulation). The leopard's tale this year started with a bang since Bella, who was the star in the past three series of Big Cat Week, was being courted by four adult male leopards of the resident Talek area, two of them were the notorious Big Boy, a monstrous male, and Golden Balls who eventually fathered Chui and his sister previously. Following Bella turned out to be quite tricky for Saba and the leopard crew for Bella embraced a typical life of solitude, very much conforming to a life of leopard standard. With Bella dissolved into the woodlands, flickering some guest appearances in the series, it is the tales of Tamu and Honey that made the series yet another cause to feel the pull at our heartstrings.
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART IX
BIG CAT LIVE 2008 – TERMINUS EST ERA
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As a recapitulation of Big Cat Live 2008 and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 9 – "2008: A Cheetah Mother Called Shakira"
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
Honey died in February 2007, creating a sickening vacuum for those who loved her endearingly. The tragedy popped up in the scenario due to a veterinary intervention, which could have been well-monitored in every sense of the word. Her three male cubs went on to become a formidable trio to be reckoned with—popularly known as "Honey Boys," who eventually appeared on two of the occasions on Big Cat Live. The BBC Natural History Unit was after the beaconing thought to render the show refreshed with the new tinges of facundity, and Big Cat Live essentially turned out to be the most ambitious project with the incorporation of two brilliant personalities, Jackson Ole Looseyia and Kate Silverton—one belonging to the vastly etched world of wildlife tourism, another one from the dynamics of television presentation. Eventually, Kate turned out to be a linker between the feline stories that unfolded.
Big Cat Live occupied the 7:00 pm prime slot on BBC One, captivating millions of audience on the orbit of recency. But, in order to share the stories of the cats, the respectively assigned crews filmed during the daytime as well. On the first day of filming, Jonathan Scott was once again on the trail of cheetahs. With Honey gone forever, and Kike presumed to be dead, Shakira turned out to be an obvious profile to follow up. With her five fluffy cubs (initially, there were as many as six) on her toe, the quintessential sense of jeopardy turned up on the scene yet again as she encountered a harrowing collision with lions, fought hyenas, and got molested by the Honey Boys, who were on their quest for a mate in oestrus. Shakira, however, was not an unfamiliar face to the crew. She turned up on the scene in the 2003 series of Big Cat Week as a pregnant young cheetah, having a bit of scrap with Kike in Rhino Ridge. Later on, she was vividly featured with Duma, one of her daughters from a litter in 2004 in Big Cat Week 2005 and on one of the episodes of Big Cat Diary: Family Histories. Initially, she used to be called Sita, a Swahili word for "six" since she was raising six cubs, but later on, Jonathan was on the quest for a different name. Primarily, he thought to bestow the name "Shikar", a Hindi word for "the hunt," and finally, she turned out to be known as Shakira, an Arabic word for "the blessing". Her five cubs were undoubtedly the blessed kernel of her motherhood.
While Saba Douglas-Hamilton took a break from the show, and Jackson filled up that slot of the presenter with his enormous ethnic touch and guiding sensibilities on conservation, he was definitely a perfect choice to catch up with one of Big Cat's old friends, Bella. When he finally tracked her down, Bella was in a painstaking situation as she seemed to have received blows, perhaps from one of the encounters with a prey animal. She eventually recovered later, and Jackson delve into Bella's extraordinary dynasty—her extended family that incorporated Olive, her daughter from a litter born in 2000, fathered by Big Boy, as well as Binti and Ayah, Olive's boisterous twins who were born in 2006. But, that was not yet the full dimension of the extensive dynasty of rosettes because there was still a member left to be introduced—Kali, Olive's only surviving son from her litter born in 2008. With this picture of contentment, the "Jackson Five," as Jackson had fondly named them, essentially became the real icing on the cake.
The star lions this year, once again, was the Marsh Pride of lions. With a great paradigm shift in the familial frame, White Eye, Red (Mumma Lugga), Lispy and Bibi ruled the horizon with their nine mischievous cubs, ranging from eight to ten-month-old (four of them would become the core of Topi Plains Pride in coming days). The pride's prime hierarchy was taken over by two new enigmatic males, Clawed and Romeo, two of the very same males from the Paradise Plain who killed Notch's coalition partner in early 2005. Although they were a formidable coalition of three with Pavarotti being the third male, he was nowhere to be seen when Big Cat Live began in October 2008. Notch and his male heirs were ousted by them in 2007, an in-between year of filming the consecutive series of Big Cat Week and Big Cat Live. However, his three female offsprings were living on the fringes of the Marsh Pride territory, putting a healthy distance between them and their mothers and aunts. They were the ones, who eventually became the famous "Three Graces"—Sienna (often addressed as Beauty in Big Cat Live), Joy and Charm. Simon King, with the crafty backup of the night filming crew, etched every possible detail of the lions' highs and lows, mostly like the filming sessions of the first series of Big Cat Diary, back in 1996. The denouement of an extraordinary and ever-relevant series, thus, was drawn!
BIG CAT DIARY UNCUT, PART X
THE MARSH LIONS – BEYOND BIG CAT DIARY
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE (The Truth About Lions and Dynasties)
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE (Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride, Part I)
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE (Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride, Part II)
As a recapitulation of The Truth About Lions (2011), Dynasties: Lion (2018), Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride (2022) and,
The Big Cat People Podcast, Series II: Big Cat Diary Uncut
Episode 10 – "The Truth About Lions"
Date of Release: 14 July 2023
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE
BBC's one of the greatest trends of magnum opus, Big Cat Diary wrapped up in 2008 with Big Cat Live, the Natural History Unit's most dynamic endeavour. But, there is something that should have been termed augmented reality in the orientations of the daily lives of the great felines of the Mara. Jonathan Scott has been chronicling the story of the Marsh Pride since 1977, and it is worth calling the Marsh Pride the world's most famous lion dynasty for good reasons. Perhaps, none of the groups of animals has been featured for so long a temporal range on numerous occasions, featured by disparate media units. Forty years is a tremendous timespan that can display a whole range of paradigm shifts in a certain plethora of cultivation, and wildlife conservation, however, is not an exception. It is hardly possible to offer an extensive view of the Marsh lions' predicament in a single recapitulation. Therefore, I could not help involving as many as three fundamental write-ups to showcase that enormous history in an encapsulated way. The first URL offers an outlook of the situation of the pride life that was prevailing in the period of eight years, ranging from 2010 to 2018, incorporating two of BBC's most significant outcomes, a two-part programme called The Truth About Lions, which aired on BBC Two in 2011 (and later, on Animal Planet as well), and Dynasties: Lion, filmed between 2015 and 2016, and released in 2018. The second and the third URL, eventually, turn up on the scene as the combined unit of the most desired critical retrieval of the epic 90-minute BBC documentary called Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride as it essentially unravel some of the harsh realities of conservation status, underlining a few key issues such as the extended effects of poisoning the livestock carcass on the associative ecosystem. Find out more, and we are sure that we are going to be cherishing Big Cat Diary again and again as the most prevailing and relevant wildlife soap ever filmed that combines subjective sentiments with the wider demonstrations of wildlife conservation.
BIG CAT TALES 2017, SERIES I
We're Jonathan and Angela Scott, the Big Cat People and, we've been following the lions, leopards and cheetahs of Maasai Mara for over forty years. They're not big cats to us – we know them as individuals. Alongside us, is our good friend Jackson Ole Looseyia. He has spent his life in the Mara and, these characters are as special to him as they are to us. Join us, as we draw back the curtain on the intimate story of their lives.
BIG CAT TALES 2019, SERIES II
I can't even begin to guess what the word 'paradise' means to you. But for me, it was always to come to Africa; to take a safari, to see, to listen to wild lions. To find a place like this – the Maasai Mara in Kenya. For as long as I've been living in Africa, the lion has represented to me the iconic African creature, the symbol of courage, of strength. And the Mara is simply a kingdom of predators, a kingdom of lions, and I don't think that we have ever – Angie and myself – being out on a game drive without finding a lion. It is that wonderful place for them. This is an extraordinary place – Musiara Marsh. We named these lions after this place. The Marsh Lions – forty years ago! And we feel most at home here, sharing time with these big cats. The sound of lions, big or small, just warms my heart!
— JONATHAN SCOTT is back on the trail of those big cats, whom he knows for years. Adding a vast sense of continuity to his catchy recapitulation, Angela Scott says: "I think it's a wonderful thought that lions have been here for thousands of years. These lions' ancestors were here!" Cut to another scene, displaying his suka (the colourful mantle of the traditional Maasai outfit) Jackson Ole Looseyia frames his concerns about leopards, the secretive cats of contrast: "In our culture, we call leopards 'shadows'. And [it is] exactly why I love leopards. Because it gives me that mystery. A quick screening of the memorable events from the current projection, and there begins the second series of Big Cat Tales. Read Full Article
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