Smaller Hunters

The enormity of the biomass in eastern Africa creates niches of all sizes. While many of our earlier posts on carnivores have focused on the big cats and dogs, there are of course smaller predators for smaller prey throughout the landscape. The only trick being that since they are smaller they are much harder to spot in comparison. This Serval was the only one we saw but we were lucky enough to watch it hunting for small reptiles or rodents on our way out of Ngorongoro Crater.
At the other end of the rarity spectrum, jackals were quite common throughout our trip and always busy looking for smaller prey or the remains of a kill. This silver-backed jackal was out in Sweetwaters on a hunt. They typically seemed to work in pairs and we had a handful of charmingly close encounters but for the most part they kept their distance.
There are a surprising number of breeds of mongoose on the ground out there if you are lucky enough to spot them. We managed to get a sighting of each of the five main species but were only able to photograph two of them. This Dwarf Mongoose was part of a troop in the Maasai Mara in one of our lodges that were quite photogenic, running alongside the path and digging for beetles.

Spare a Few Bucks?

Rounding out or collection of every conceivable variant of east african antelope, here's a selection of animals that all end in 'buck.' First off, this bushbuck was seen at the salt lick outside The Ark where a few of them were very cautiously feeding around a herd of buffalo. This particular salt lick was also very thick with Ox Peckers which were eating parasites off the passing animals and some of the female bushbucks were covered in them and quite frightened by the number of birds swarming on them.
The most elusive buck of all for our trip, this reedbuck was seen by a stream in the Serengeti and when I say elusive, I mean that we only saw maybe 3 in a full month of being out and about and came home with just five pictures of them. They are lovely animals with distinctive forward-curling horns and beyond that I can't say much about them.
The most common buck we saw were waterbuck, this one in particular was posing quite nicely at a roadside in Sweetwaters. We saw two types, Defassa and Common, though I have a hard time telling them apart. They are the biggest of the bucks we saw and apparently their thick fur makes them hard for lions to eat comfortably as it bothers their mouths and their meat doesn't taste very good. I'm sure this defense mechanism doesn't work all the time but it seems to give them a degree of safety from predation. We had several other nice encounters with these animals including seeing some of them sparring for females during a walk we took in the evening at Lake Naivasha.

Cold Blood in the Hot Sun

Besides the crocodiles mentioned earlier we actually saw quite a few other reptiles and lizards in our adventures. Geckos were very common in most of the lodges either in the dining room or bedrooms, catching flies and whatnot. This little fellow lost his grip on the ceiling above and landed on my pant leg at breakfast one morning, very nearly landing in my coffee. We were both a bit stunned but he was no worse for wear and quickly took off. They are quite resilient little creatures, we had one with only three legs in our bathroom in one lodge and it was still able to run up the walls and skitter about after mosquitoes quite well.
Agamas are quite common on rocks in the hot sun, either out in the field or beside the pool. The males are quite brilliantly coloured with orange heads and purple tails while the females are smaller and brown. They are quite often very tame as well and we were able to get nice and close pictures of them several times. Often reaching up to more than a foot in length (with tail) they are quite harmless and lovely in their own way.
This monitor lizard is a little less safe though. We only saw them at breakfast one morning but this one was a good 3-4 feet long and had pretty fierce claws. They are slow moving and docile though and are typically fed at breakfast time at that particular lodge. At the same lodge we also saw a cobra early one morning but failed to get a picture of it and were as spooked by it as it was by us.

Country Life

Of course not all of east Africa is game parks and wildlife. There are millions of people living regular lives throughout both nations and the parks actually only comprise a small part of the total landmass. We passed through numerous towns and villages on the way and these pictures help give an idea of what non-city life is like. The market below shows much of the hustle and bustle that goes on, trading fruits, vegetables, clothing and meat.
While car ownership is growing, even in the cities donkeys are very common for labor and transportation. And where regular drinking water is hard to come by (and even in the lodges we only had bottled water to drink and brush our teeth) many people had carts to haul drinking water, either for themselves or for sale. Nearly all the roads everywhere are broken down asphault or gravel and we all inhaled more than our share of dust.
Towns would also include hotels, cafes and shops as seen below. Coke advertising was incredibly prominent in both countries, but in Tanzania it was endemic and there was only one poster of a woman drinking it for every shop, cafe or gas station. The strangest thing to me was the number of combination Hotel/Butcher shops that we passed... I would have thought they would not mix well but apparently they are quite common.

Grazers of Samburu

Rounding out our unintentional antelope week, this entry is all about the grazers of Samburu. Since that was such a distinctive and unique ecosystem full of animals we only saw there, it seems right to group them together. Starting off with the Greater Kudu, another large antelope like the Eland. We only saw these 2 females in an early morning drive, though others in our group saw a few closer to the lodge.
More common throughout the area and quite striking in appearance, these Beisa Oryx were a charming sight. We saw several large herds of them as well as groups of babies which they leave in largely unguarded groups in the backend of the desert for most of the day while they go and graze, making Kathryn view them as very unfit parents. Their distinctive horns are quite likely to have contributed to the legend of the unicorn as fragments made their way back to Europe from Africa or Arabia.
Rounding out the set with my personal favorite, the gerenuk is a charming and slender animal. Often called the 'giraffe antelope' these grazers can stand perfectly upright on their hindlegs, balancing against trees with their front legs to graze on higher branches than they could normally reach, their long snouts reaching for leaves between the thorns.

Assorted Antelopes and Gazelles

The huge fields and savannas are constantly teaming with grazers, many of which are antelopes and gazelles. They all belong to the bovine family with the larger ones being antelope and the smaller ones being gazelles in a distinction I don't fully understand. This Grants Gazelle is a reasonably large one slightly bigger than a white-tailed deer and easily distinguished not only by its size but also the shape and heft of its horns.
Similar in design but smaller, striped on the sides and with different horns this Thompson's Gazelle was a common sight mixed in with Grant's or on their own. Their tails are constantly going like little windshield wipers making them easy to identify and pleasing to see.
We didn't see many of them, but the Eland below are the largest antelope in the world and weigh in at more than a ton. Despite that size they can really move quickly when they need to.

Dik-Diks

Aside from the overwhelming abundance of megafauna, both Kenya and Tanzania were home to many smaller animals such as the Dik-Dik. Given the cutest name of any African mammal and being the size of a rabbit, these tiny gazelles were a constant source of delight for us whenever we spotted them. They mark their territory with scent glands near the tip of their noses.
Making them all the sweeter, they mate for life and are rarely more than 20 feet apart. We felt a certain kinship with this and assume that in earlier lives we were likely Dik-Diks ourselves. Anytime they were grazing separately on opposing sides of a path or if a van got between a pair they would very quickly become agitated until they were back together again.
There were 2 types of Dik-Diks in our trip. The Kirk's Dik-Dik seen earlier, and Guenter's Dik-Dik shown below. Kirks were common in drier areas such as Samburu, while the Guenter's was primarily found in Ndutu. Aside from regional differences, the Guenter's has a broader snout as you can see below.

Curio Shops

All the major highways and park gates in both countries we visited are littered with curio shops. They typically resemble the nondescript building below, made of sheet metal or whatever else is at hand. There's usually a few people waiting around outside for the next tourist van and sometimes a selection of shields/blankets. They also offer the cleanest bathrooms you are likely to find on the roads and the best place for your drivers to catch a late breakfast if they had too early a start for a proper one.
Inside they are a wonderland of spectacular art. Tragically the most beautiful pieces are also the least likely to ever make it home... although every place advertises shipping. The cost for an 8ft maasai warrior is going to be prohibitive, and once you get home its a hard thing to find a spot for, especially in Vancouver.
Most of the curio shops are a collective of local artists and there are often people in the shop doing work. This fellow was making rosewood hippos and Kathryn bought one of his unfinished ones since she liked the smell of the wood and the finished ones had a lacquer on them. These places are always fun to visit as the prices are more suggestions than final and you can haggle until you come to a price everyone is happy with. In my first time I got a mask down from 30000 shillings to 300 and still probably overpaid; the key seems to be finding a price where everyone is smug about the deal they just made.

Storks

Storks are surprisingly common in Africa. Many are migrants through the area coming south from Europe and Asia in the winter, while others live there year-round in the myriad ecosystems of the countryside. This saddle-billed stork was spotted in a swamp in the Serengeti.
While many storks were foraging on the ground, others were flying far overhead to search for food. This yellow-billed stork was part of a flock flying through Lake Naivasha. We often saw them wading in shallow pools looking to catch fish with their beaks.
Rounding out the set, this charmer is a Maribou stork which we saw throughout our trip. This particular one was tame enough to have close pictures taken in Sweetwaters but they were rarely hard to get reasonably close to. They are avid scavengers and opportunists, keen to eat anything they can find be it living or dead. They stand 4-5 feet tall and are common to any kill sights, often in tandem with vultures.

Painted Hunting Dog

We were incredibly fortunate while in Samburu to see a pack of painted hunting dogs warming up for their morning. We saw them run down a hill and were able to follow them for at least half an hour before they hunkered down in a dried up river and were largely hidden from view.
They are very social pack animals with hunting habits similar to wolves. By hunting cooperatively in a group and covering large distances they manage to have an 80% hunting success rate compared to the 30% or less common to lions and the like.
Our tour operator had only seen them once before in his 20 some visits to Kenya, and our driver had only seen them once as well in 9 years of work, so we were incredibly lucky to see them so well in our few days in Samburu. These beautiful animals need a very large area of land to hunt in the loss of their habitat combined with competition against larger lions and hyenas in that smaller space has made them critically endangered.

Warthogs

Warthogs certainly win the contest for "so ugly it wraps around to cute again." We saw them throughout our trip, primarily in the open grasslands but occasionally in the forest. Though these pictures sometimes make them look small and cute, the males can get up to 300+ lbs and be more than a meter long.
They use their tusks for defense, to duel between males, and to root for food. They are quite omnivorous and will eat all manner of plant life along with some carrion.
Like many other prey animals in the savanna, the warthog seems to survive by sheer numbers. A typical litter will apparently begin with up to 10 piglets and that number will gradually whittle down due to various predators, but enough survive to repeat the process. When startled they all perk up their tails like little flags and trot away in single file, which is often referred to as "The Kenyan Express."

Regal Eagles

We saw quite a few kinds of eagles throughout our trip. Many of them are very similar and can be quite tricky to tell apart ("Say, was the edge of its mouth behind its eye or infront of its eye?") so I have selected a few of the more distinct birds to show some of the variety that is out there. First off is a Tawny Eagle, one of the most common birds of prey that we say. I managed to nab this one just as it was taking flight and I've always been a bit smug about it.
Our boat ride on Lake Naivasha afforded us some opportunities to see African Fish Eagles in action. Although not very experienced at it, our guides would throw caught fish into the water near our boat and the eagles would dive down and snatch them out of the water, resulting in some nice action pictures and slow motion footage.
Rounding out the set, this Crested Eagle has a rather charming bouffant tuft of feathers on the top of its head. Unfortunately we only saw them at roadsides with harsh backlighting and at Lake Manyara with too much shadow and distance, so our pictures of this unique bird are not as nice as they could have been.

The Savage Majesty of the Hyrax

The hyrax is an exceedingly cute mammal around the size of a cat which seems to live exclusively at safari lodges. There are several types in Kenya and Tanzania but we only saw the rock hyrax (although on several nights at Sweetwaters we could hear tree hyraxes shrieking at around 4am).
Scientists which clearly understand the evidence more than myself have determined that they share common ancestors with elephants and dugongs. Something about toenails, tusks and bone structure. I'll take them on their word since it makes hyraxes even more awesome, but I never would have guessed it. They perpetually look like they're smiling, so maybe they are as pleased by this as factoid I am.
They also come in baby form and are even more ridiculously cute then. We're honestly quite surprised that they've never been a fad pet and I think when I tire of CGI I'll try and settle down with a hyrax ranch somewhere. Apparently they have a surprisingly long gestation period and take a long time to mature, so maybe that will prove to be more trouble than its worth... either way they are exceedingly adorable when they're smallest.

The Maasai Mara

The final place we visited in our tour was the Maasai Mara which makes up the northern tip of the Serengeti in Kenya. Every stereotype about Africa that Disney brought to The Lion King and nearly every documentary about migration has its roots in this preserve. The word Mara in the language of the Maasai people means 'spotted' and the picture below illustrates how the savanna is speckled with vegetation as far as the eye can see.
The Maasai Mara is also the location of the Mara River which is the famous crossing made by the wildebeest migration every year as millions of the animals come north from the Serengeti to graze and mate. The waters were quite low when we were there, but the banks looked quite rocky and treacherous as it was and neither of us envied the wildebeest their crossing.
As there's so much to see and do there, we had 5 days there and in that time we had wonderful encounters with elephants, lions, cheetahs, topi, leopard, warthogs, jackals, hippos, cape buffalo, dwarf mongeese, and birds of all shapes and sizes.

Good Gnus

We saw massive herds of gnus (or wildebeest, whichever you prefer) in Ndutu and they have been described as being animals made up of left-over spare parts. Goofy looking to us or not, the design clearly works for them as every year millions of them migrate from the Maasai Mara to the Serengeti.
For several days we were surrounded by thousands of these fellows every time we left the lodge and every single creature that could eat them was doing very well for themselves. Some fell prey to cheetahs or hyenas, others had died of sickness and a great many had gotten stuck in the mud of a nearby lake and drowned. But gnus succeed by sheer volume and despite the individual losses, the herds were massive and healthy.
They were starting to give birth in the last day we were there so we saw a few babies but not as many as were to come. Gnus give birth all at once and once again simply overwhelm predators with numbers that cannot be dented by any hunting. The babies we saw were less than 5 hours old and were already dry and learning to run so there's certainly a steep learning curve to being a gnu.

Sweetwaters

At the base of Mount Kenya, Sweetwaters is a private nature preserve (rather than a park) which was enclosed by fences and had quite a varied range of terrains to explore. As a preserve it also had a few enclosures of animals which were protected but not indigenous such as a troop of chimpanzees which Jane Goodall had setup a refuge for.
Because it was fenced and fully enclosed, Sweetwaters also felt a little more restrained than many of the parks we had visited, particularly with regards to big cats. We did have a nice encounter with some cheetahs on one drive, but they were pretty scarce throughout. That didn't stop us from seeing some nice elephants, go-away birds, crowned cranes, black rhinos (one of which Kathryn got to feed), hippos, bush babies, and an assortment of gazelles.
Believe it or not, by this point in the trip we had nearly had megafauna overload and it was getting increasingly difficult to amaze us with new displays of animals, but luckily some of the best views were to be had at the waterhole right in front of our tents (shown below). From here we could watch giraffes, rhinos, impala, waterbuck, zebras and warthogs come in for a drink and a mudbath without having to do all that arduous driving and standing we were used to.