Tag: wildlife

elephants, flamingos, giraffes, hyenas and jackals

from cats and dung beetles we quickly move on through the next few letters of the alphabet …

first, a breeding herd of elephants, and they’re breeding. no, that’s not the baby elephant’s trunk in the last photo.

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then onto flamingos. barely pink flamingoes, but flamingos nonetheless.

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the giraffes are very graceful, in an awkward way.

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jackals are part of the canine family, while hyenas aren’t, and if there were any “i” animals, i didn’t spot them. check out the teeth!

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and that’s enough of the safari for now.

next: something that isn’t the safari.

cats

because no one goes on safari to see the rock agama.
because no one goes on safari to see the rock agamas.

the cats of the serengeti: within an hour of arriving in the serengeti, our guide took us to a set of rocks where the lionesses hung out, and over the course of our stay we went back again and again to see what the cats were doing. we also came across lions as we followed the wildebeest: the lions go where the food is.

sometimes, it helped to follow other vehicles.  we found four cheetah cubs when we pulled up alongside one carload of safari-goers; and when our scout heard from a passing driver that a leopard had killed a wildebeest and dragged the carcass up a tree, we were able to find him without too much difficulty. however, it was just by chance that we found some cheetahs that had just killed a wildebeest. the sight was amazing: well-fed and happy, the cats were alert for hyenas that might come in to try to steal their bounty, but they didn’t feel the need to run away when we got close.

on to the photos: first, the lions, because we saw the most of them.

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other cats: you have your cute cheetahs …

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you have your predatory cheetahs …

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and you have your leopards (finally).

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zebras

as you can see in the last post, the wildebeest are often accompanied by zebras; and if i’d been on this safari while i was in high school, i’d have majored in zoology at college and studied them. in addition to looking really fabulous – according to wikipedia, it really is white stripes and bellies on a black coat – they are remarkably social animals.  they move in herds (“harems”, usually one stallion and 5-6 mares) by themselves, but they also accompany other foragers on their travels.  we frequently saw lines of wildebeest plodding across the plain with a few zebras standing lookout:

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perhaps it’s the uniform.

they’re also very vocal – we heard them whinnying and barking all night long. not the noise i’d expected them to make.

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look at that face. one theory is that the stripes serve as camouflage. which body does the head go with?
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honestly, these guys will hang out with anyone.

again, i could post a hundred photos of zebras, but i’ll do that later.

next: cats

wildebeest on the serengeti

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the serengeti airport.

the serengeti ecosystem, in the north of tanzania and the southwest of kenya, stretches over some 12,000 square miles. the serengeti is the home of the maasai, and the name itself comes from the maasai word “serengit,” which means “endless plain.” apart from a few rocky outcroppings, a few forests, and the rare hill, the name describes the area pretty well: unlike ngorongoro crater, there is almost nothing to stop you from looking miles into any direction …

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… that is, nothing except wildebeest. january is prime wildebeest migrating season, and the plains were full of them. by one estimate, 1.2 million wildebeest will travel through the serengeti during their annual migration, along with 750,000 zebra and hundreds of thousands of other game. we surely saw hundreds of thousands of them during our stay. (i lost count after eight.)

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i have more photos of wildebeest, but to avoid gnu overload, i’ll save those for another post, and end with this one of a wildebeest in full gallop instead.  500mm lens, 1/15 second at f/27 while panning – a happy accident.

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