Our last of four days in the Serengeti and we packed lunch for a long excursion to where we hoped to find the great herds. Hardly ten minutes out of camp and a baby wildebeest ran pell mell across our path.
Two minutes later it came back and we screeched to a halt as it faced us square on from the middle of the road. It had lost its mother and was starting to imprint on us. Only a hundred meters away five hyaena woke up and stretched their massive necks towards us.
I suppose as we age the accumulation of changes so untethers us from our foundations that it seems apocalypse is right around the corner. Nevertheless, this safari truly makes me wonder if African wilderness will be around much longer.
I remind myself that in 1979 Peter Beard published a best-selling book, The End of the Game, and his predictions couldn’t have been more wrong. There was not the near total collapse of the wild animals in East Africa he predicted, but in fact a tripling of the animal populations.
So I’m hesitant now to render a similar prediction. Few knew the East African wilderness as well and intimately as Peter Beard. Few were as moderate or unopinionated as him.
Yesterday we left the crater for Lake Manyara National Park. The crater was enormously stressed, but not by the customary impacts of a normal dry season. This was a much different dry season, one framed by the extremities of climate change.
The single-most easily observed effect of climate change in East Africa is the severity of micro-weather cells. The crater like the Serengeti was severely dry, more so than normal. But the areas hardly a few miles away in the higher elevations of the crater rim and Karatu butte were soaked. Not so much by current rain (although there has been some unusual showers) but by the floods of the last rainy season which went on nearly a month longer than normal.
Drop back down to Lake Manyara and the desiccation of the veld was as bad as the Serengeti or the crater floor. Yet the lake itself is massive. Rivers flowing into the great lake itself are so strong that tracks I used in the rainy season in March are now under water!
All this because the higher elevations – a soaked micro weather cell – continued to drain off the unusually wet season.
Grass on the veld doesn’t grow because a nearby river is flowing, but it does mean that a normal light shower provides just enough moisture to bloom grass on that desiccated veld: I guess the best way to explain this is that despite an unusually hot, dusty and dry veld, an unusually high water table supports grass growth at the slightest encouragement.
We saw ridiculous numbers of baby buffalo in the crater. (Buffalo eat very little of anything but grass.)
We encountered so many giraffe in the Serengeti around lakes Ndutu and Masek that 8-year old Donovan began each game drive by announcing, “I guaranteed you we’ll see giraffe.” Masek and Ndutu were unusually large for the same reason as the crater lake and Manyara: heavy continuing runoffs from the nearby highlands.
Giraffes main food are the leafs of the acacia tree. Deep rooting acacia trees tap easily into a high water table. The acacia near all these lakes are leafing anew and even blooming, something not normal before November.
More than a hundred elephant around Lake Masek, dozens in the crater forests, and yesterday, almost a hundred elephant in Lake Manyara is not something I expected to see, now. There were many babies, and elephant abort at the slightest indication of a drought. Elephant are the most voracious consumers of vegetation on earth. They can easily move great distances and they don’t remain in areas without food.
So why sound the alarm?
Elephant, buffalo and to some extent giraffe, easily move great distances and fairly rapidly. Other animals don’t. Impala are home-bodies, with family collections rarely shifting far. Hippo might travel ten miles a night to eat, but they don’t easily adjust their territories, returning to the same river bed or lake each morning.
We normally see hundreds if not thousands of impala on a normal safari. I think so far we’ve counted 35 or so.
The first four hippo we found were frozen dead in the dwindling waters of the Seronera river, their hides already cracked wide opened and storks already picking into them.
All the 20 or so hippo we saw in the crater were crammed into the single lake at Lokitok with none in other normal areas like the well-signed “hippo pool.” At the famous hippo viewing area in Manyara we saw only a couple hippo and they were all very sick, their hides chalked with salt.
Could it be that only those animals capable of rapid shifts in territory will now survive? There’s more water than ever, but it comes as torrential rains in shorter intervals into smaller areas followed often by severe heat and drought.
Animals that can react to these anomalies might not just survive but prosper. Those that can’t will die. But the matrix that emerges will be radically different from the one that has existed all my career until now. Can the ecology retool and resync this fast?
My gut says no. But then so did Peter Beard’s almost a half century ago.
Cats dominated our first few days of game viewing. On only four game drives we’ve racked up 34 lions, 6 cheetah and one leopard.
Lion aren’t doing well in Africa. Nearly a third of the population has been lost in the last decade, and we experienced first hand one of the reasons why.
Our first two days were spent at Ndutu Lodge in the very southwest of the Serengeti, only a few kilometers away from a rather highly populated rural area of ranching Maasai. Over the years Maasai have become much more sophisticated businessmen, using vitamins and antibiotics and modern farming methods.
So their herds have increased, their wealth has increased and their population centers have increased.
During that same time tourists have increased and on the other side of the great wildernesses, Africa’s dynamic cities and towns are exploding with population and industry.
This is the dry season. Virtually all the great herbivore herds have moved far north into Kenya’s Maasai Mara where it’s still raining and the grass is still growing. This puts enormous stress on the cats, who have survived for eons through these normal cycles of feast and famine.
But normal cycles have become exaggerated by climate change. It’s wetter and colder in the wet season and dryer and hotter in the dry season. Feasting is now gluttony. Famine is now starvation.
Two days before we arrived a pride of lion killed two Maasai cows. The ranchers vowed revenge and it is this dynamic now dominating the fringes of wilderness areas throughout the entire sub-Saharan Africa.
NGO and field researchers were summoned by the park authorities to try to defuse the situation. Their only weapon is talk. They try to convince the Maasai that the wilderness is essential for a Tanzanian future for a variety of reasons, especially tourism.
And now some NGOs are also offering to compensate farmers and ranchers who loose their stock to wild animals.
So the researcher in charge of our area actually solicited us to travel with him to an area where two lion were mating. The rest of the pride’s members had skedaddled away after their cow pilferage, but a mating pair won’t move for the duration of their 3-day affair.
So we tourists provided not only the cover-buffer against revenge but also an object lesson in the value of lions. These were our first two.
The next day as the mating pair finally moved on, they did so after first killing a Maasai donkey. Not good news.
With such human/wildlife conflict going on in our neighborhood, lions started to appear all over the place. Like in front of our rooms at Ndutu Lodge.
Askaris (guards) were summoned to patrol the area all night long with strong flashlights. Still, the deep throating of the lions and the cries of hyaena following them filled our night.
Today we left the southwest area for the middle of the park. There is a long stretch on the “main road” which is a vast, now desiccated plains which in the rainy season is the verdant prairie. Normally now no cats will be here, because the large herbivores are gone.
But the season has been so stressful, that we found a lioness on the side of the road – in very bad condition – stalking Thomson Gazelle! That’s ridiculous. These marvelous little creatures which don’t need water and eat roots in the arid plains, covered the landscape. But a full grown Thomson is hardly 35 pounds! More to the point, they’re way too quick and nimble for a lion.
The main road got clogged with safari vehicles stopping to watch the lion. It was rather bizarre and comic at the same time. She took no notice of the dozen vehicles hardly ten feet from here as she crouched behind some roadside grass intently stalking the gazelle.
Then two giant road craters came up and I told my group to scatter quickly. It just wasn’t a good situation. The lion was desperate. Even a weak and desperate lion is powerful.
During our later drive that afternoon along the Seronera River we saw 13 more lion and a leopard. Just before we ended the game drive, we saw six lion hanging from a tree as if someone slung giant sausages up there!
It’s always easy to find cats in the dry season, but what we’ve seen is a mixture of the wonderful normal and the really scary abnormal.
There is tension on the veld.
The Miller family safari didn’t waste any time. We chartered right into the Serengeti for the first two nights at Ndutu, which I’d planned because I had expected light game viewing during this middle of the dry season.
I was reminded that I’m often wrong. My preference is for the wet season when the migration is here, the veld is abloom and dramatic rains refresh each day, but family safaris are often dictated by the summer school holiday, and there are definite pluses for safaris at this time.
The biggest plus is cats. Cats don’t migrate. They feast and starve and with far less vegetation obscuring the landscape, they’re much easier to find now. On the very first game drive we encountered a mating pair. The next morning we found a pride of 12.
Neither group was starving, but that unfortunately was because they had killed two Maasai cows and one Maasai donkey. In fact it was a researcher who tipped us off to the mating pair, and that concerned me, as researchers don’t normally point tourists in their direction.
But he was worried that the Maasai would retaliate and that our presence could impede that. He’d been trying to convince the Maasai of the value of lions to the tourist industry: that it was vital to their own well-being. More to the point, though, modern Maasai use social media as much as anyone else. It wasn’t likely they would dare the incessantly clicking iPhones or Cannons.
Bibi, that’s grandmother in Swahili, is Judith Miller who’s been with me on several safaris in the past. She chose exactly the right ages to show her three grandsons why she loves Africa so much: they are 8- , 10- and 11-years old. The family also brought their summer guest, 12-year Louis of France. Many would shake their heads at a safari with 4 energetic boys that age, but in fact this is a fabulous time.
The boys couldn’t have been more excited, stopping the car a lot more than the adults, and for each new bird as well. Ben was picking out animals at 400 meters. Charlie was naming birds that most adults don’t know.
After the pride of 12 lion we got news of a possible cheetah hunt. We raced out of the marsh onto the plains and found a mother cheetah with 2 6-month olds walking behind her. She was definitely hunting.
About 400 meters away was a single, unassuming Grant’s gazelle that she had targeted. She started out walking slowly towards it at first, and then broke out into a slow trot for a short while, using the tall dry grass as cover. Her cubs stayed an appropriate distance behind her.
We stopped the cars and finely focused out binocs, since I didn’t want to disturb their possibilities. The dry season around Ndutu is a very tough time for cats. Later we’d find a couple more gazelle and three warthog within her range, but even so that’s a lot less than during the rains.
We watched the whole affair. She finally crouched down, and the cubs behind her did as well. The gazelle didn’t see her. It was just over a slight ridge, and the high grass was favoring the cheetah.
I thought she was within range to strike, but she didn’t. The gazelle finally noticed her and bounded off, ending the hunt.
We moved up to her also shortening the distance between us and the gazelle, and I noticed what a large and powerful male Grant’s it was. The smaller Thomson’s Gazelle is the cheetah’s preferred kill, and this nearly twice as big animal – especially a large healthy male – would be quite a task.
She had to worry, I think, about getting hurt as much as losing the hunt. Most cheetahs birth 5-7 cubs. She had only 2 left and they all looked hungry. If she was hurt, they would most certainly die. So perhaps when she got close enough, she figured the risk too great.
We left passing other gazelle and warthog, so her chances were hardly over for the day.
Both twin lakes of Masek and Ndutu are pretty full. The marshes around them have good ponds and the ground though dusty is not desiccated. There were good rains last season and the veld is healthy. As a result, the area may seem almost as if in a drought, when in fact it is an oasis for many animals in this southern part of the Serengeti.
Coming back last night only the swamp edge we encountered nearly 100 elephant in five different families, including quite a few youngsters. Everybody looked quite healthy. They were feasting on the last of the area’s fodder, including the very tough swamp grass, something they don’t usually eat unless they have to.
So for all my biases about when to go on safari, it was clear that normal cycles that have existed for aeons all have a purpose. Our game viewing these two days in Ndutu in the middle of the dry season would please anyone! Even me!
Wild dogs are on the rise throughout sub-Saharan Africa and there is probably no better marker species for the overall health of the wilderness. Hey. This is a very good news story!
Together with a number of wildlife organizations reporting significant decreases in poaching, I think it’s fair to say the African wilderness has taken a great turn for the better.
Wildlife organizations began acknowledging the comeback of the dogs since the beginning of 2015, but many of us guides noticed it several years earlier.
Check out my “OnSafari” blogs for the last 4-5 years and you’ll see an amazing account of wild dog sightings. Dogs are “definitely back” and maybe even better than they historically were.
Wow! So what does that mean. Well if it’s true, it could be that dogs are filling in the gaps being left by the definite and serious decline in lions. Filling such an important gap at the top of the food chain would be a critical need of the overall wilderness.
The story of the dogs’ comeback also gives us a good indication of what methods for conserving the wilderness work best.
Last week a sixth pack of wild dogs was released in the northwest Serengeti to great fanfare. This is in such marked contrast to only a decade ago when wildlife organizations had to keep secret their work in saving the dogs, because local farmers and businessmen so hated them.
So that’s the first big change: people in the area no longer express such animus to dogs as they showed only a short time ago. That doesn’t mean that ranchers don’t get awfully mad when a dog kills domestic stock. With government and wildlife organization funds to fairly compensate ranchers that have lost stock to dogs, though, many fewer ranchers are retaliating.
To mitigate the problem of more well educated Africans and not enough jobs, a number of “wildlife” organizations have dedicated serious resources to the social plight of Africans. Wildlife Works created 85 jobs in an area with a fragile peace between people and game.
“The key to preserving wildlife here is human relationships,” explains Wildlife Works’ Amy Lee in an op-ed published in the New York Times last week. Her organization is now the third largest employer in Kenya’s wild Rukinga district, and Amy credits this fact with saving the wilderness and wild dog in particular.
But there is also a real sense that the dogs are taking less domestic stock. The dog take less domestic stock because there’s more wild stock for them. Again this could be a reflection of the serious decline in lion, dog’s most aggressive competitor. But there is also a healthy increase in hyaena, and the total increase in dog and hyaena seems greater than just filling a gap left by lion.
That means the entire ecosystem must be improving. The persistence of organizations like the Frankfurt Zoological Society to continue reintroducing dogs over the last 30 years has finally paid off.
Finally a number of subtle social/wildlife collaborations all around the Serengeti have proved enormously beneficial.
A group of American zoos led by Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo continues an aggressive campaign to freely inoculate Maasai pet dogs against common diseases that surround the Serengeti. I’ve written before about this highly successful program.
Wild dogs, being more inbred than pet dogs, easily succumb to common dog diseases. This program has the added benefit of pleasing the people who surround the wilderness.
It’s always hard to tell a conservation success story: We worry that it will lower our vigilance. We know how fleeting it can be and with climate change how unpredictable now the tools that we’ve developed for monitoring and improving are becoming.
But at least for the moment, give yourself a pat on the back!
Our last two days of game viewing in the central Serengeti were fabulous! Lion hunts, five leopards, rare birds and some of the most magnificent scenery on earth!
We left Ndutu and headed for the Moru Kopjes. This is the prettiest place in the Serengeti, with lovely small bush forests and meadows nestling giant granite kopjes that sculpt all sorts of shapes and sizes into the landscape.
My principal object in going is to visit two sacred Maasai sites: the cave paintings where newly initiated warriors are instructed by the outgoing warriors of their tasks and responsibilities, and Ngong Singing Rock, the legendary place that Bernard Gzimak convinced Maasai residents to leave much of what is now the Serengeti in 1972.
We did that, and it’s both heart-breaking and hopeful to hear the tales that grew the Serengeti at the expense of Maasailand.
But we also saw a rhino in the Moru! Now that’s something, because truly wild black rhino are about as rare a wilderness event outside of the Ngorongoro Crater that anyone can have, today.
And in the Moru we saw ten lions in two trees! It was actually quite hilarious and was right on the main Sopa road off the main Seronera road just after entering the Moru. The family had obviously finished off a pretty significant kill, because every one of their bellies was big.
After a lion kills and feasts (often increasing body weight by a quarter to a third) it has to flood itself with water. I can only imagine how painful that must be. Then the lion starts to hyperventilate. Besides running down a zebra at break-neck speeds, digesting hunks of unchewed meat is the hardest thing a lion body has to do!
Then, it tries to sleep. In this case, ten of them were flung about two trees on opposite sides of the road, all looking terribly uncomfortable. It was hard to position the belly so that it didn’t pull them off the branch, and once positioned, the rapid breathing made the branches move up and down as if the tree were alive!
In our last two days in the Serengeti we also saw five leopard. I hesitate to say this, because I guide many safaris to many of the same places where we never see a single leopard!
We also watched a lion hunt from start to finish and racked up more than 30 lions in three days of game viewing. For all you prospective first-timers to Africa, beware: that’s very unusual.
I think you can figure out by now that this was an extraordinarily successful safari, and I’m pressing myself to figure out why.
There’s no question that luck has a lot to do with it. But I know for certain from this group that client attitudes might be just as important.
We averaged 10-12 hours of game viewing each day. When I say that, I get myself tired, but we didn’t feel tired at the time. Everyone was so enthusiastic and the wilderness and its magnificent animals so beckoning. This is my favorite time of the year, when the rains that began at the beginning of the year get properly organized.
So the veld is so incredibly beautiful. The skies, especially at sunset, are so heart-thumpinginly magnificent. And the dramatic, loud and powerful storms disrupt hardly a couple hours of the day, a break normally at lunch time that we really need.
There are baby animals everywhere. We found one group of female wildebeest and it seemed like virtually every one had a calve! We saw baby giraffe that looked at us with as much curiosity as we had looking at them, and cheetah cubs hardly a couple weeks old that walked up to our vehicle almost meowing!
The Serengeti is my favorite place in the world and it lived up to every hope and demanding expectation I had for this marvelous group of people traveling with me.
Day 1 of 4 in the Serengeti: a lion kill, a cheetah kill, and most exciting of all, a reasonable hunk of the great migration!
The reason we found the migration was because the people I’m with are so incredibly enthusiastic. It’s that simple!
I expect that most of the migration is in the center of the park where we go, tomorrow. We’re currently in the far southwest. The information we garnered from the many other drivers here at Ndutu Lodge, as well as from rangers and what we could pick out of the radio traffic, suggested no large herds in this area.
So we headed out at dawn ready for anything … but the great herds.
We saw five cheetah and ten lion including a lion kill and a cheetah kill plus an unsuccessful cheetah hunting a baby wildebeest. That event failed when the mother wildebeest intervened at the last possible moment.
We had a fabulous breakfast on the plains packaged for us in Ndutu’s famous picnic baskets and we’d been out for five hours. We were an hour from camp so I was ready to call it a morning and return for lunch, but…
…Justin, one of my outstanding long-serving driver/guides, heard over the radio that 3 days previously wild dog had been seen another 90 minutes out from the lodge. Was anyone interested? That was in a pretty remote place.
The chances seemed extremely thin. It could mean at least an 8-hour game drive and no lunch!
Soon the entire group, all three vehicles was on board with the idea, and off we went – in the opposite direction of lunch!
Hardly a half hour later I began to see a very large number of wildebeest.
Most of the wildebeest we had seen until now were in wildly dispersed migratory files heading to the center of the park, where we expect to be tomorrow.
Twice, lost baby wildebeest had attached themselves to us, once on the Lemuta plains and once this morning at breakfast.
On the plains the poor 2-week old ran itself close to death trying to keep up with our speedy Landcruiser. We finally led it to a water hole with hyaena looking on.
This morning we were packing up breakfast when another two-week old showed up blarting. It pranced back and forth hardly 20 feet away from us. There were no other animals near us, much less its mother.
There are all sorts of reasons baby wildebeest get separated from their mothers, but one important one is that the migratory files are moving so quickly; and they were all moving in the same direction. I was pretty convinced that the big herds were all in the center off the park.
But before long on our extended trek to find wild dog we were among very large herds, not just of wildebeest, but zebra, gazelle and all sorts of other animals. We probably passed 500 eland.
Everything was located in and around the Kerio Valley, west southwest of Ngorongoro not really too far from the village of Endulen. Nobody suggested this area to us. None of the radio traffic or driver/guides or rangers even thought that part of the migration would be here.
The main reason no one knew about this is precisely because no one travels to this place! It’s deemed far too far from established tracks or lodges. The only reason we found it, is because my group is so tirelessly enthusiastic!
Five people have been with me for 30 days, yet they were among those lobbying for staying out!
So no, we didn’t see the wild dog. My predictions on that count were right: the chances of finding some family of animals in a place they were three days previously is ridiculously slim.
But it was just the excuse these wonderful adventurers needed to stay out, go further, do more. And what a reward we got!
You might think these are parakeets in the Amazon, but they aren’t! They’re Fisher’s Lovebirds coming down to water within ten feet of the dining table at Ndutu Lodge in the southwest Serengeti! This beautiful picture was taken in September, 2011, by Chris Benchetler on one of my guided safaris, as part of my collection of favorite photos from my safaris over the last 39 years. Come back here on July 23 as I begin guiding my last safari of the season in Tanzania.
I love this photo by Sander Glas taken in the Serengeti in 2007 on one of my safaris. I’m on vacation until July 23 when I will guide my last safari of the season in Tanzania. Meanwhile I’m posting some of my favorite safari photos. Although dramatic lion and leopard photos are generally sought by professionals more than their lowly cousin, the cheetah, I actually think the cheetah displays more whims of personality and is actually more photogenic.
It was our last of four days in the Serengeti and we had enjoyed some of the most spectacular game viewing in the world. But now, the storm threatened all the good memories.
We left camp around 3:30p for the stark beauty of the nearby Maasai kopjes just outside Seronera. In the past I’d seen many lion, cheetah, elephant and of course the ubiquitous reedbuck over these mostly flat grasslands.
The kopjes were small by the standards of the Gol or Lemuta, but they were very pretty. They were spaced on either side of a great swamp, and we had been challenged finding a way through the swamp to the kopjes side.
Our game viewing had been supreme, truly by my own high standards. But the payment for this unique experience was what we were doing now: challenging the rainy season in a time of mendacious climate change.
There’d been a drought, then floods. The rain which had been so absent for six weeks seemed to now be pouring back in unimaginable amounts.
As we left camp I noticed that two giant cells were forming: one to the east and one nearly straight above us. If they grew together …
We stopped for some lions near the Seronera river. We quickly checked out the rocks where we knew a mother leopard was raising two cubs. Then we crossed the main road and followed the Seronera river to the east.
We had just reached the swamp when I saw the two cells were combining into a super storm. Tumaini raced up about the only hill in the whole area and we took stock of our situation.
I looked at Tumaini and suggested we just stay put, wait out the torrents that were expected and then slide back to camp.
We knew it would be a near catastrophic downpour. The murram tracks in this area were pretty good and while they would rut and splinter, usually a Landrover could travel over them even when covered in water.
But the tracks across the swamp were a different matter altogether. They weren’t murram, but cut over black cotton soil, about the closest thing to quicksand that exists. Add a few drops of water, and you’re sunk on the spot.
Tumaini realized that before I did and in response to my suggestion to wait it out, he shook his head and put the car in gear.
We followed our own tracks back across the swamp and raced as fast as we could back to camp. The rain began all at once.
It was so heavy we could hardly see. The car slid back and forth as if being jiggled in a giant bowl. My window wouldn’t close completely, and waves of water fell onto me. The front windshield fogged up completely as the temperature plummeted. I had to open the side flap window and use my sweater to keep the window as clear as possible for Tumaini.
We reached Makoma Hill where our camp was located. The lightning started fierce, the thunder shook the car.
We had to traverse some black cotton soil here, too. Sometimes the car was racing as we slid near sideways. Headlights were pointless. Tumaini had to just feel the road.
Finally we turned up the hill, and a camp positioned down from ours was the first respite I felt. We were still ten minutes away from our own camp, but high enough that waiting it out now would be OK.
And the storm was relentless, and the rain grew even worse. Tumaini forged ahead and we dove into a part of the road completely submerged, the water above the floorboard. I was actually momentarily proud that we had sealed it so well none seeped into the interior.
The main track into camp was useless, so Tumaini used a back service road. We arrived while the torrents continued to fall. There was only a few moments of more anxiety as we waited for our second car, Justin. When he pulled in, relief was manifest. None breathed more easily now than me.
I walked with Kirsten into the dining tent through heavy rain. We stepped through racing water at least a half foot high. But once inside the tent, shoes and socks peeled off and beer and Amarula in hand, the drama ended as an adventure never to be forgotten!
Later I would inappropriately bristle at Theresa’s remark that this is why people avoid the raining season. I bristled because in normal times, super storms were about as rare as a white elephant. Well, maybe not quite as rare, but you get my meaning.
Now perhaps I have to concede that super storms in the rainy season might be the new normal. Climate change is devastating here. Obviously, everyone loves the rains, but when they come all at once the veld floods, the washes carry away the soil, new plants die, animals flee the standing water.
All that was yesterday afternoon.
Today we left the Serengeti and took our first game drive in the crater. The drive back to Ngorongoro was truly breath-taking. I’ve rarely seen the veld so absolutely beautiful, glimmering in every shade of lustrous green you can imagine.
Maasai seemed jubilant. The herds were grazing to the fill, as were the neighboring zebra and gazelle.
Tomorrow, our last game drive: dawn in the crater!
But that has to remain an estimate. We made no aerial survey, no individual counting. It’s my opinion, but one rendered from forty years of doing this. And whether my numbers are off or not, I can absolutely say that it was among the very best migration experiences of my career.
Brewster Johnson asked me today at Naabi Hill how often we could see the scene around us, and I replied if the weather is normal, every March and April.
That’s pretty true for the south side of the hill we were on at the time: the wilde surrounded the south side from as far as we could see towards Lemuta to the Kusini Plains where the swath ended.
But as we pulled over the hill we could see almost as many again northeast towards Gol and somewhat towards Moru. And combined with what we had seen for the last few days in more distant places like Lemuta, this experience this year was extremely unique.
Today we moved from the southwest tip of the Serengeti at Ndutu into the center, via Naabi Hill. Yesterday evening as we watched yet another line stream into the Ndutu forests (which we could not see from our vantage point today at Naabi) we watched the end of the line brought up by a lost calve.
Hardly had I mentioned that the calve wouldn’t last then we saw a hyaena run after it, easily catching its tail, then immediately start eating it alive.
The scene was disturbing to some on my current trip and is understandably disturbing to many, and to dismiss these feelings by just saying “This is the wild,” is inadequate.
What the “wild is” is not an easy concept. Hyaena are as essential to the wild as baby wildebeest. Hyaena killing baby wildebeest are as essential to the wild as babies being born to wildebeest.
Today we also saw wild dog. Wild dog and hyaena are the most gruesome killers, and wild dog look remarkably cuddly and loving, no less than a slurping lab. But both animals eat their prey before they kill it.
Why that particularly gruesome way of recycling has evolved may be more a reflection of our own consciousness than any comment on what the wild is.
But above all, it’s the perfect lesson on why we need diligently to keep ourselves from anthropomorphizing wild animals.
For more than a half day we were immersed in the Great Migration. For at least four of those hours we were driving, constantly surrounded by wilde, zebra and breath-taking scenery. We saw perhaps three-quarters million animals … or more. How do you count endless dots from horizon to horizon?
And for that entire time, from start to finish, from 11 a.m. in the morning to 5 p.m. in the evening, we saw no other cars, no people but Maasai herdsmen. We were 11 people and two safari vehicles alone in the greatest wilderness on earth!
We entered the great southern grasslands just after Shifting Sands not far from Olduvai Gorge. The veld was green and beautiful, so unlike when I was here 12 days ago.
We immediately saw some wilde and zebra, but it was through our binocs that we saw the enormity of the experience which awaited us.
Hardly a half hour later, driving off-road across the plains we encountered the herds. For the rest of the day, from about 11:30a to 5 p.m., wilde were everywhere.
We saw massive herds from just north of Shifting Sands up to Lemuta, northwest all the way to Naabi and into the Gol (perhaps it went on from there, but we could see no further) and west virtually to the main road.
With our binocs we could see great herds further north, but we had to head west to Ndutu. From what we saw I’d estimate the migration filled at least 125 sq. miles, but that was all we could see.
It was so much different than the quarter million we found far from this place in the Masabi Plains 12 days ago.
They were frolicking and bouncing, like healthy wilde, twisting in the air as they ran. There was incredible blarting. This was the normal migration I know, not the distressed one coming out of the 6-week drought we saw hardly two weeks ago.
But it was unique, too. The beautiful grass was new. There was little scat, few zebras, no eland, only 2 hyaena and a handful of ostrich. Of course the veld was filled with tommies, but they reside here year-round.
There were tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of red-capped lark. This remarkable little bird has a distinct job in the migration yet to be fully understood, but it is always found in the vanguard of quickly moving herds.
It was green throughout, with many, many pools of water.
The herd east of the main road had so few young it was depressing. The herd west of the main road was like the ones we saw two weeks ago in the Masabi Plains, about 1 in 10 or 9 were this year’s calves.
Where did they come from? Where had they been?
I remain convinced that the drought fractured the herds. We can say now that it fractured into at least two large pieces and many smaller pieces, but perhaps even more large pieces.
One went into the western corridor, 2-3 months ahead of schedule. Those composed the quarter-million we found 12 days ago. The much larger piece we saw from Lemuta west must have been in the valleys of Angata and towards Sale, perhaps west of Loliondo but east of the Maasai kopjes, although it had been reported very dry there, too.
Perhaps this larger piece wasn’t a large piece, but dozens if not hundreds of smaller fractured pieces.
What particularly amazes me is that when we saw the Masabi herds leave the western corridor right past Soroi Lodge on the old road through the pass to Seronera, I couldn’t understand why they were leaving. It was still raining and the grass was beautiful.
But leave, they did. So why? Why make the trek down to the southern grassland plains if you’re surrounded by excellent fodder?
Is it hard-wired into them to linger in the south until the rains recede in a normal fashion? Are the grasses in the south that much more nutritious and does wilde physiology recognize this?
Whatever the answer, the migration is back on track this year after being dramatically wrenched awry by the drought. I just hope the rains continue as normally they would.
It will take at least another month for those who survived to recover their normal body weight. There are far fewer young than normal. The year will end badly for wilde numbers.
Climate change is devastating the earth. The Great Migration avoided a catastrophe this year, but it seems now like every year is somehow abnormal. Small periods of intense drought are spaced by horrible flooding.
It worries me how long this most amazing spectacle on earth will continue.
According to Mark Weingarden we saw 283,465 wildebeest in a long narrow area that we traversed of about 20 sq. miles. Mark’s metric was to estimate how many northeast football stadiums would be filled by the herds.
No one suggested we go where we found them. Virtually all the information we had collected for days, combined with internet sites like Herdtracker.com, gave us no help. We were the only car for four hours on the Soroi Lodge access road off the western corridor road.
We had left the western corridor after finding no wildebeest in the Masabi Plains where they had been reported over the last few days. If they had been there, they’d left in a hurry.
Giant storms were building. The veld all along the western corridor from Serena past the Masabi Plains looked green enough with good enough grass to support large herds, but we saw none.
We took side roads like down to the Hembe and Mauri camp sites. It was beautiful and fresh and we saw topi and impala, warthog, tons of gazelle, baboon and even a group of more than 100 eland.
On our side roads down to the Grumeti River it was depressing. The river is ridiculously low, so it was clear the greened up veld was from recent rains. At the Grumeti Retina hippo pool later we’d see two dead hippo, one being devoured by giant crocs. Perhaps that’s why we got to see the very rare white-headed vulture … because there is so much dead carion.
The afternoon before we had seen maybe a thousand zebra on the plains in front of Makona Hill, and Tumaini and I conjectured that if they were in vanguard of something, it would be in the pass that led from Soroi to Seronera.
We would have liked to take that little track, but it was too wet. That has been the great irony of the last few days: no wilde, stressed and sick animals, but a greened up veld. About six weeks of hardly any rain was breaking and confusing everyone, perhaps including the wilde.
So after following all the public leads and coming up zero, we headed back to the Soroi access road. I wasn’t optimistic. I told my clients that it didn’t look good.
I was wrong.
Estimating wildebeest numbers is not easy, and it’s even harder when they aren’t spread across flat grassland plains, but woven among many forests and valleys. But I think Dave may be close to the numbers. I think we probably encountered 10-15% of the entire population.
Even sitting on a rise in the great plains it’s hard to see any more at once, so we lucked out … we found the great migration.
If I’m right about the numbers, where are the rest?
I remain convinced that the dramatically unusual weather has fractured the herds this year. Likely most of “the rest” is in as small or smaller groups scattered all over the place. That would be a natural and positive reaction to near drought.
But now that the drought seems to have ended the herd mentality may kick back in gear. They aren’t in the best of condition. Instead of the normal 1 in 4/5 wilde being babies, I reckon it’s not more than 1 in 10. Have they died already?
We saw two groups with young that still had their umbilical chords. That means very late births. Many herbivores have the capacity to delay birth for at least a little while. Perhaps that’s what’s happening.
The big question now is where will they go. If they came from Masabi in the western corridor they were several months ahead of a normal schedule. We left Ndutu several days ago and it was raining hard there.
This afternoon it’s very hard raining where we are in Seronera, and storms filled the sky from horizon to horizon. Grass will be growing everywhere.
But it is the specially high nutrient grasses of the southern plains that the herd needs for a healthy year. Will they go back to that? Or are they too weak or tired?
I’ve got one more safari to go. Stay tuned!
Twenty-four lions and 4 cheetah as we moved from the southwest of the Serengeti into its center.
It was a fabulous day but the veld’s condition continues to disappoint. Despite the heavy rains that we’ve experienced the last several days, it’s so obvious there had been a long period of drought.
There is a patina of green everywhere, but as we move north it becomes less and less. At Naabi Hill there seemed to be a clear divide and we climbed the hill for a better look.
Sure enough, south of Naabi the green was more intense. North of Naabi it was still very dry looking.
I would have liked to stay up atop the hill longer, but Tumaini shouted up that there were lion on the path, so we all scurried down.
And lion dominated the rest of the day. We went first to the sacred cave paintings of the Maasai in the Moru Kopjes, where I explained the traditional morani’s matriculation from just being circumcised. There really aren’t many traditional Maasai anymore, but I remain so sad that these paintings of such historical importance aren’t being preserved.
Several times, by the way, I’ve been foiled taking people to the paintings by lion!
Then we went to the Ngong Singing Rock where I talked about the terrible shaft the Maasai have received probably for a thousand years. This was the rock where the last of the forced Maasai evictions took place in 1972.
Even today the government is talking about further evictions.
We left lunch and Ngong Rock on a tip about a buffalo kill by lion. We had seen innumerable Grant’s gazelle and hyaena, a family of four cheetah, lots of buffalo and lots of giraffe, so the group was anxious for beige fur.
We couldn’t find the kill, so we gave up and decided to take a short cut towards our camp. Alas, destiny was in control, and we came across a family of three females with three sets of cubs, 15 in all. The blood on their faces was a clear indication they had made the kill.
They were hyperventilating so fast. Lyle clocked them at 90 breaths/minute. And the two mothers on which cubs tried to nurse would have none of such nonetheless, growling at them and knocking them away. It had been a hard day!
We left the lion, hightailed it to our camp, saw more elephant, more giraffe and who knows how many more lion, at least two more prides of and one mating pair.
We also spent the day gathering information. I dare to say we think we know where the migration is. Tune in tomorrow to see if we’re right!
The quest for the big herds of the great migration began as we left Olduvai Gorge and crossed off-road past Shifting Sands onto the Lemuta plains.
It will not be easy this year. The veld is unusually dry, although just in the last few days heavy rains have been falling over the scorched veld.
In the first part of our Lemuta plains journey we saw hardly a handful of Grant’s gazelle. We past several dead cows with Nubian vultures nearby. For some reason there were hundreds if not thousands of Fisher Sparrowlarks jumping across the desiccated landscape.
Just opposite Lemuta mountain where we put lunch on a kopjes we noticed there were many Maasai cows in very large herds scattered across the veld. As we got closer to the kopjes you could see Maasai “flags” (pieces of blue cloth stuck from a pole) claiming almost every kopjes that looked good for a picnic.
We finally found one that wasn’t claimed and drove our vehicle around for security, then I popped out and walked around it. Lots of agama agama, some northern wheatear and Fisher sparrowlarks, but nothing else.
As we set lunch two Maasai crossed the veld and sat down on some boulders politely 20 yards away. I told my clients about current Maasai travails, quiet apart from the weather, including the proposed forced eviction of 4,000 from Loliondo.
Tumaini – who is Maasai – invited the men closer to our picnic area and they moved in quietly.
The Gibb’s lunch was spectacular as usual, and I told everyone before compiling the left over food to make sure to remove any chicken. Traditional Maasai believe eating fowl is satanic.
I then walked over to the two men with Tumaini, and we gave them the boxes of a substantial amount of uneaten food.
They were extremely grateful and several clients shook their hands warmly. Their gentle thank-yous were not in English but clear nonetheless. I told them – in Swahili which Tumaini felt they might understand – that I was specially happy the rains were coming.
That evoked robust nodding and lots of remarks that I couldn’t understand.
We then headed west towards Ndutu. There were a few more animals, but despite the Maasai’s protestations that they were being besieged by hyaena, we saw none. Likely the Maasai were not too kind to a visible hyaena, and we saw at least a half dozen other herds on our hour or so westwards journey.
In fact, we probably saw more cows than animals (except for gazelle, of course). Although the veld was dry, there were many pools of water, and the skies were ominous. I think the Maasai know the rains will continue, now.
We ended the day at my favorite lodge, Ndutu. Eva and Aadje were both there to greet us and Eva gave my group a short history lesson about Ndutu.
The next morning our dawn game drive encountered a female cheetah that was hunting. We stayed with her for several or more hours as she laboriously but unsuccessful stalked some Grant’s gazelle.
In the afternoon we braved the wet roads and went into Hidden Valley, a remarkable depression in the Kusini Plains west of Naabi Hill, in search of a giant python reported to be there. We found no python, but we did encounter another cheetah on our way back.
It’s been a beautiful two days at Ndutu, one of my favorite places in Africa. The herds have still alluded us, but the drama and brilliance of the returning rains was exhilarating.
Stay tuned, now, as on our final two days we search for the great herds!
