Serengeti National Park, Tanzania - May 2014

We had an almost six hour, 155 mile drive, from Masai Mara, Kenya, through the border crossing at Isebania into Tanzania to the Serengeti Serena Lodge in Serengeti National Park. It was mostly on dirt roads through small villages. Serengeti NP is 5,700 square miles. We had a short game drive to the lodge, had a morning and afternoon game drive the next day, with lunch at the lodge, then drove south through the grasslands on our way of the park the next day, on our way to Ngorongoro Crater. It was the least distinctive animal sanctuary of our Africa visit, perhaps partly because it is so large, and partly because animals are farther apart and more difficult to find there. On the grounds near our lodge we found Kirk's dik dik, rock hyrax living in and on the thatched roofs of the cabins, and a bare-faced go-away bird right outside the entrance to the lodge. It was the best place for vultures. We found Ruppell's Griffon vultures, white-backed vultures and lappet-faced vultures, as well as the marabou storks that are usually in the area with them as well. We saw other assorted birds, including rufous-tailed weavers, lilac-breasted rollers, black-headed herons, helmeted guineafowl, and a white-bellied bustard. We saw our only caracal not long after leaving the lodge, hiding in some long grass, and we saw my only leopard, napping in a large tree. While watching the leopard a mother spotted hyena came running by the base of the tree with a young cub in its mouth. Our guide told us it was protecting the cub from male hyenas that often kill the cubs to get the mother hyenas back into heat. We saw several prides of lions, but mostly at quite a distance, and just laying in the grass. We saw lots of Masai giraffes, including some fairly large groupings of 6 or more. I fell in love with hippos there, huge, disgusting, loud and raucous. We saw our only banded mongoose, a large group of them. Lots of olive baboons, some vervet monkeys, eastern warthogs, Grant's zebras, defassa waterbucks, Coke's hartebeest, topi, east African (back-backed) jackals, and perhaps my favorite sighting of all, a huge Nile monitor.

Publicado el junio 13, 2022 01:37 MAÑANA por rwcannon57