Photo by Dona
As we entered the Ndutu area of Serengeti National Park we began seeing more and more animals. It seemed like there were animals everywhere -- wildebeest, gazelles, elands, giraffes, ostriches, vultures. We were in animal overload mode.
Our accomodations at Flycatcher Lagarja Camp were pretty upscale. There was a separate bathroom in the back of the tent, with a shower on one side and a toilet and washstand on the other. The shower was fed by a five gallon bucket filled with hot water and hoisted outside the tent.
We went to sleep that night to the sound of lions somewhere in the vicinity. The next morning we awoke to a bazillion birds singing.
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| Flycatcher Camp | Flycatcher Camp Mess Tent
Photo by Dona |
We headed out looking for birds and whatever else we could find, but we had to stop when Douglas noticed the engine temperature was pretty toasty. We popped the hood and discovered we had a leak in the cooling system. After much pushing and pulling of hoses and poking around we decided it was the water pump gasget. The bolts holding on the pump were a tad loose so we tightened them down, but it didn't solve the problem. Douglas had a bottle of stop leak, so we poured that in. Amazing. It was the first time I had ever had that stuff actually work. For the next couple of days we kept a wary eye on the engine temperature, but it stayed down where it belonged.
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| Land Rover
Photo by Dona |
Land Rover
Photo by Dona |
We must have looked a bit strange climbing in and out of the engine compartment, as the local giraffes kept staring at us.
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| Mom ... | Junior | ... and big brothers and sisters | ||
| Photo by Dona | Photo by Dona | Photo by Dona | ||
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| Zebras
Photo by Dona |
Hartebeest
Photo by Dona |
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| Coqui Frankolin
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx Eagle | Black Shouldered Kite | Long Crested Eagle |
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| Yow! Don't fight with these guys.
Check out at those Spurs! |
Photo by Dona | |
| Grey Breasted Spurfowl | ||
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| Giraffe |
We came to a large tallgrass area and Douglas spotted something moving we couldn't quite make out. We stopped to observe for a while, and it turned out to be a cheetah.
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| Cheetah | ||
After the first one, we found quite a few Cheetahs. Most of them were just lying around. Some had made a recent kill and were gorging themselves, and others were too well-fed to be working very hard. This was the time of plenty, with baby animals more or less dropping out of the sky. It got so we would watch the cheetahs for a short while and then head off looking for something more interesting.
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| Cheetahs
Photo by Dona |
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| Great Spotted Cuckoo
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx Grey Woodpecker | |||
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| Yellow Throated Longclaw | Taita Fiscal Shrike
Photo by Dona |
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| Lesser Kestrel
Photos by Dona |
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| Wildebeests
Photo by Dona |
Wildebeests
Photo by Dona |
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| Secretary Bird
Photo by Dona |
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| Cape Buffalo | Cape Buffalo, Yellow Billed Oxpecker |
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| Yellow Billed Oxpecker
Photo by Dona |
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| Photo by Dona | |
| Lilac Breasted Roller | |
We learned that cheetahs are the only cat which does not have retractable claws. It is a superb sprinter, and not having retractable claws is an advantage when they dig in for a quick start or change of direction. I wanted to inspect this guy's claws but decided that might not be a good idea.
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| Cheetah
Photo by Dona |
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| Cheetah Claws | |
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| Photo by Dona | Photo by Dona |
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| Cheetah | |
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| Hippo |
We had been exploring along a river bottom. When we headed up onto the plains themselves, the sight was amazing. As far as we could see, clear to the horizon, were wildebeests. Big wildebeests, and little wildebeests. There were other animals mixed in with them such as zebras, but mostly it was wildebeests. And to know that these numbers are only a fraction of what used to roam here. What an amazing place this earth is. What a precious resource we are squandering with our unfettered industrialization and human population growth.
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| Ndutu |
That evening we had giraffes and grant's gazelles wandering around the camp. A Swiss couple in the tent next to us said they had had two cheetahs jump onto the hood of their vehicle.
After dinner we asked Douglas if he wanted to play a game with us. We had Bananagrams with us, which is sort of like Scrabble. We should have done this sooner, as it turns out Douglas loves to play games like this. We explained the rules, then I said something about maybe we should handicap ourselves some way since English isn't Douglas' native tongue. He said we should play the first game normally, so we did. It was a pretty good game (a good game means I won :-)). We went again, and the second time Douglas won. I was impressed, and he was delighted. We played a third round as a tie-breaker, and he came out on top. From then on we played every night, although we didn't have many nights left.
We hit the sack but were awakened by a noise that sounded kind of like a digeridoo, but without the vibration -- just the sound of air swirling around in a large, long tube. We got up quietly and looked out the tent windows. There was a big elephant at the back of the tent next to us, with one foot planted about six inches from a large solar panel on the ground. I thought when it moved it would surely collapse the tent by tripping on the corner guy rope, and / or destroy the solar panel by its foot. It moved in what appeared to be a careless manner, but probably was not, from the neighbors' tent to immediately behind ours. The sounds were strange, very low and very powerful. We thought there was something wrong with the elephant, but learned later it was probably a "rumble" of some kind. I tried to take a picture of it out the tent window but it was too dark, although we could see it quite clearly, particularly its white tusks, in the moonlight. For a second I thought about using a flash... But a startled elephant can do a lot of damage, I suspect, and an angry one certainly can. For a while I think it was inspecting our (empty) shower bucket up on its post, probably smelling the small amount of water that remained. I had visions of the whole tent crashing down and being dragged off if it somehow snagged something. But eventually it moved off with no damage done.
Our first big animal the next day was a male lion who seemed totally bored, both by the day and by us and a neighboring vehicle.
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| The Land Rover is clearly not a threat. | Lion
Photo by Dona |
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| Photo by Dona | Flies are clearly a pain for a lion
Photo by Dona |
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| Lioness | ||
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| Wildebeest Calves
Photo by Dona |
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| Photo by Dona | ||
| Fishers Sparrow Lark | Black And White Cuckoo | |
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| Yellow Collared Lovebird
Photo by Dona |
Superb Starling
Photo by Dona |
Xxx Yellow Fronted Canary
Photo by Dona |
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| Photo by Dona | |
| Dark Chanting Goshawk | |
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| Cheetahs
Photos by Dona |
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| Black Headed Heron | Lesser Kestrel | Yellow Throated Sand Grouse |
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| Ndutu Area of the Serengeti |
We headed across the plains to a small lake / large waterhole, where we found a pair of lions, a bunch of grant's gazelles, and bazillions of wildebeests and zebras. And two ostriches.
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| Ndutu Lions
Photo by Dona |
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| Grants Gazelles
Photo by Dona |
Grants Gazelles
Photo by Dona |
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| Wildebeest Waterhole
Photo by Dona |
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| Wildebeasts Crossing Lake |
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| Wildebeasts Crossing Lake |
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| Ostrich, Grants Gazelles |
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| Ndutu Herds |
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| Zebra
Photo by Dona |
When we returned to the mixed forest / grassland area around the river, we found more great birds.
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| Pied Avocet
Photo by Dona |
Greater Flamingo
Photo by Dona |
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| Diederik Cuckoo | ||
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| Ndutu Trees
Photo by Dona |
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| Photo by Dona | Photo by Dona | ||
| Little Bee Eater | |||
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| Dikdik
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx | Abyssinian Scimitarbill | Helmeted Guineafowl |
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| Bateleur Eagle | Bateleur Eagle
Photo by Dona |
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| Xxx Eagle
Photos by Dona |
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| Common Rock Thrush | Rufous Tailed Weaver | Vitelline Masked Weaver |
In the evening after our Bananagrams, Douglas told us a Swahili tongue twister: "Kale kakuku kadogo kako kwako kaka." "Is that small chicken with you?"
We spent our last morning in the Ndutu area scouring the bottomlands hoping to find a Marshal Eagle, but to no avail. But as usual, we were rewarded for the fact of searching. Fairly quickly, we had to push another vehicle that was stuck out of a minor rut. I was totally surprised that he was stuck; I thought maybe he didn't have 4WD but more likely the vehicle didn't have a differential lock.
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| Xxx
Photo by Dona |
Birds at Flycatcher Camp
Photo by Dona |
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| Giraffe | Giraffes
Photo by Dona |
Giraffes
Photo by Dona |
While trying to get a picture of a small bird, we spied something else -- a fuzzy brown thing that twitched. It turned out to be a Caracal ear, and attatched to the ear was a whole caracal!
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| Caracal | Gary Caracal
Photo by Dona |
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| Long Crested Eagle | |
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| Photo by Dona | ||
| Giraffe | ||
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| Lappet Faced Vulture
Photo by Dona |
Very rare Two-Faced Vulture |
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| Zebras and Wildebeests at Waterhole |
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| More Zebras and Wildebeests at Waterhole |
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| Even more Zebras and Wildebeests Waterhole |
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| Waterhole
Photo by Dona |
Waterhole
Photo by Dona |
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| It's hard to get comfortable sometimes. | Lioness in a Tree
Photo by Dona |
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| Flower Xxx Yellow Red
Photo by Dona |
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| Hartebeast |
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| White Headed Vulture | African Cuckoo |
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| Steenbok |
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| Photo by Dona | ||
| Long Crested Eagle | ||
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| Speckled Mousebird
Photo by Dona |
We left the Serengeti in the afternoon, headed for Lake Manyara and our last day with Douglas.
As we drove through the Maasai country it seemed like everyone was standing by the side of the road with their hand out, trying to sell us something or pose for a picture for which they would charge us. It saddened me to see such an enduring people stooping to that.
We pulled off the road for lunch at a non-descript draw. Within five or ten minutes two small boys had found us, looking for a hand-out. We gave them our left-over food and they eagerly took it all, even the chicken bones. They indicated they wanted a bottle of water, but Douglas doesn't like to give them that because he doesn't want to encourage them begging for "stuff" from visitors. Then they wanted us to take their picture, but I declined.
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| Lunch |
This page last updated on 2014-05-10.
