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Musiewild's blog

~ An occasional blog, mainly photos

Musiewild's blog

Tag Archives: Tanzania

Tanzania 10

21 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Butterflies, chimpanzee, cricket, David Livingstone, Gombe Stream, Henry Stanley, Jane Goodall, porcupine, Tanzania

Monday morning, February 22nd, was too wet for anyone to go trekking – so I just wandered around taking pictures of my immediate surroundings.

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But it cleared up in the afternoon, and we had a much less exhausting trek than the day before, this time keeping to beaten tracks, and enjoyed standing around watching a few chimps – a young one was particularly co-operative as far as pictures were concerned, building a nest high up in a palm tree, and then swinging across to other vegetation – and butterflies.  Hitherto, throughout the trip it had been very frustrating to see many more beautiful and diverse butterflies than I have ever seen in one region in my life, but not to be able to taken pictures of them. Now, no doubt because we were on foot and not confined to jeeps, it was possible to look at them at leisure – especially when one of them decided that my sweat was good to drink. It stayed there for a good ten minutes.

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A very noisy cricket

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Porcupine quill

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Do not be fooled by the zoom.  This is at least twenty metres up.

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The final goal of our trek was a waterfall which Jane and the locals used to regard as sacred, though this view has changed since water has been taken from it for local everyday use.

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(Concluded next time)

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Tanzania 9

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Geology, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Arusha, Burundi, chimpanzee, Dar es Salaam, Gombe Stream, Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall Institute, Kasakela, Kigoma, Kilimanjaro, Lake Tanganyika, Olive baboon, Rift, Serengeti Select Safaris, Tanzania, Tarangire National Park, Tusk

Sorry to have left things so long on a cliffhanger.  Life, both good and bad, has got in the way since I last posted.

We’ve got to Friday 19th February, and we’ve had our last morning drive in Tarangire National Park.  We left the Safari Lodge around 3.00pm, for a three-hour drive back to Arusha, where we could use an ATM, and make little purchases in the shops, and were to say goodbye to the lovely local jeep-drivers and guides, Deo and Sammy, who had made our lives so interesting over the previous  week or so.  From there we were to transfer to a small coach to return to Kilimanjaro Airport, for an hour’s flight to Dar es Salaam, (on the coast) from where, the next day, we would have a three-hour flight way over west to Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika.

Except that when we got to Arusha, I realised to my absolute Horror and Terror and Panic that I had not got my little bag, containing purse, passport and mobile phone, with me. It should have been in my backpack.  It wasn’t.  I must have left it at the Safari Lodge, either on the settee where I had been awaiting our departure, or slung on the back of my chair at lunch.

Sammy and Ian, our British leader, took over.  It needed only a few minutes to establish that the bag had been found at the Lodge.  OK, so far so good.  But I would need that passport in exactly 7 days’ time to get out of the country, not to mention that it was to have served as identity for three internal flights beforehand.  And my purse contained plastic for hole in the wall and a lot of cash.  Moreover it would be something of a nuisance, but manageable,  not having my phone.

Sorted, hooray, within another 10 minutes.  The next colleague of Sammy and Deo, from the fantastic company Serengeti Select Safaris, to make the journey from Tarangire would bring the bag to their HQ in Arusha.  SSS would then post it to Dar es Salaam Airport where it would be waiting for me the following Friday.  What a relief!!!

For cash, well, I had another bit of plastic in my backpack.  And as for passport for internal flights – I also had a photocopy of the key page in my back pack.  This just sufficed, though things were a bit sticky at Kigoma on two occasions, when it would have been better if I had also been able to show my visa – they are tight there because of illegal immigration from the very close Burundi.

And to jump to the end of the story, a week later, someone was indeed waiting for me at Arrivals at Dar es Salaam airport with a brown paper package in her hand.  She got a hug!  And all credit to SSS – they didn’t charge me anything for flying the bag from Arusha to Dar.  (The wildlife and development charity ‘Tusk’ have received a donation from me in very grateful acknowledgment of that fact.)

For a blog which is meant to be photos, sorry that was a lot of text, but I felt I should come clean about my stupidity, and I wanted to thank publicly the great kindliness and efficiency of the Serengeti Select Safaris.

OK, back to Arusha on that Friday night.  As we approached the town and airport of Kilimanjaro, it was getting dark rapidly, as it does in any country near the Equator.  But we could just make out Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance to our left, and I marvelled at the fact that my cousin-in-law had climbed it for charity quite recently – chapeau Nick!

Once at Kigoma, a bustling town on Lake Tanganyika, we stayed for two nights in self-catering accommodation – which was interesting as, of the nine of us, two were vegan, three vegetarian and one gluten-free.  We managed, but when we stayed there for one night on the way back, we decided to have a take-away!

No great wildlife interest there, but there was a very pretty bay in which some, but not I, bathed:

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Our accommodation at Kigoma

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Some children at the lakeside.  They presented me with a crab they’d caught

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From Kigoma, on Sunday 21st February, we transferred to Gombe Nature Reserve, made famous by Jane Goodall’s research on chimpanzees, research which has been carried on ever since she started it in 1960, and now financed by the Jane Goodall Institute, for which at the age of 82 she continues to fly round the world for 300 days a year, promoting its work and fundraising.

We got there by the only possible means, a 90-minute boat ride, on the choppy Lake.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

It is the largest rift lake in Africa and the second largest lake by volume in the world. It is the deepest lake in Africa and holds the greatest volume of fresh water, accounting for 18% of the world’s available fresh water. It extends for 676 km (420 mi) in a general north-south direction and averages 50 km (31 mi) in width. The lake covers 32,900 km2 (12,700 sq mi), with a shoreline of 1,828 km (1,136 mi), a mean depth of 570 m (1,870 ft) and a maximum depth of 1,470 m (4,820 ft) (in the northern basin). It holds an estimated 18,900 cubic kilometres (4,500 cu mi).[5] It has an average surface temperature of 25 °C (77 °F) and a pH averaging 8.

I was just thrilled to think that I was actually on the Rift, a very gradually widening geological split in the African continent.

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One of the several fishing villages on the lake

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Olive baboons, the first of many we saw…

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Jetty at the Park headquarters where we stayed.

P1210576001After some lunch we rushed out for our first trek into the jungle, on the steep-sided Lake edge, in search of elusive chimpanzees.  Some of us found the pace very fast, and pushing through the jungle (machetes not allowed) very difficult indeed. It was also incredibly humid, which (partly) explains why my photos are not brilliant. Moreover, to our disappointment of course, we didn’t see many chimpanzees, though this first one is the alpha male, Ferdinand,  of the habituated Kasakela troop.

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Mango tree

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Tanzania 8

11 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

banded mongoose, blue-cheeked bee-eaters, Dik dik, elephant, grey heron, hadada ibis, Nubian Woodpecker, Olive baboon, pearl-spotted owlet, red-backed shrike, Tanzania, Tarangire National Park, Tarangire Safari Lodge, waterbuck, White-headed buffalo weaver

I took these photos before, during and after lunch that day, all at Tarangire Safari Lodge.

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Red-backed shrike

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After lunch homework. My room-mate, Sara, was a much more serious photographer than I

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Nubian woodpecker

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?Red-billed hornbill

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View from dining room

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Olive baboons at safari lodge

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White-headed buffalo weaver

When we went out in the afternoon, I didn’t add much to my stock of pictures – you may be glad to know.

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Dik dik

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I was the thrilled to be the one to spot this pearl-spotted owlet deep in the foliage. It is only 20 cm tall

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Nubian woodpecker

It was another lovely dawn the next day.

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Waterbuck

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?Common drongo

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The grass was so long, it was difficult to see the baby elephant

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?

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Nubian woodpecker

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Blue-cheeked bee-eaters

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Hadada ibis

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Grey heron

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Banded Mongooses at breakfast stop

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Common waterbuck

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Olive baboons

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(Next: … a lost passport…)

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Tanzania 7

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Baobab, elephant, grey-headed kingfisher, Helmeted guinea fowl, leopard tortoise, lilac-breasted roller, Masai giraffe, Pygmy falcon, Superb starling, Tanzania, Tarangire National Park, Tarangire Safari Lodge, Tawny eagle, vervet monkey, Von der Decken's hornbill, White-headed buffalo weaver, yellow-collared lovebird

Tarangire National Park.  How’s this for a view from your accommodation?

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Next morning was Wednesday 17th February.  Actually, I think I’ll just let these pictures, taken during our morning outing, speak for themselves.  Suffice to say that if I had been sad not to have seen many elephants before this, these two days in Tarangire National Park more than made up for it – though you can never have too many elephants.

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These are baobab trees. They store enormous amounts of water in their ‘trunks’, and can be centuries old.

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Tawny eagles

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Helmeted guinea fowl

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White-headed buffalo weaver

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Lilac-breasted roller

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Yellow-collared lovebirds

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Von der Decken’s hornbill

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Superb starling

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Pygmy falcons

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Vervet monkey at breakfast stop, one of many such to ‘greet’ us

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Wistful? Melancholy? No, pondering what mischief he can next get up to!

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Leopard tortoise

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Focus on foreground!

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Sand bath

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Grey-headed kingfisher

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Tanzania 6

05 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

black kite, black rhino, black-backed jackal, buffalo, elephant, flamingo, great white pelican, hippo, Kori bustard, lesser flamingo, lioness, Ngorogoro, Ngorogoro Crater, rhino, Tanzania, Tarangire, Thomson's gazelle, weaver bird, zebra

We moved on, and I was thrilled now to see flamingos taking off from the lake,

P1200647rising higher and higher and higher.  I was mindful of a documentary I had seen on TV about some Great White Pelicans taking off daily from a lake with no fish, using thermals to rise over some mountains to get to another lake where the food was plentiful.

As I followed these flamingos with my eyes, I seemed to me that they were doing the same thing, for whatever reason, and I watched them fly off from the crater and over its rim.  Others more interested in photographic opportunities than wildlife behaviour  did not get as excited as I was.

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Kori bustard, display

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Black-backed jackal

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We found ourselves in an area with many lionesses – and many jeeps.  The former just ignored the latter except when they had to go round them.  Reactions of other wildlife were mixed.  Some seemed to realise that the felines were not hunting, but were just in a quest for water. Others – the Thomson’s gazelles perhaps – maybe could not even see the danger.  Truly hunting lions would not have made themselves so obvious.

We were all excited to see in the distance a black rhino, something we could certainly not have counted on.

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Black rhino. The name has nothing to do with the colour.

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Black-backed jackal

To the ‘Hippo Pool’ where some of us were fortunate enough to find some shade and a place to sit to have our lunch, amused by two kinds of weaver birds.  We were advised to keep our food well covered or it might be snatched by black kites.

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Hippo pool

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Two kinds of weaver birds

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Black kite

We started to climb – in our jeeps – out of the crater after lunch, to make our way to our next Park, stopping only to pay tribute to those  who over the years had lost their lives in the service of wildlife, killed in the main not by animals but by poachers.

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Climbing up the side of the crater

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At the top

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A tribute to those who have lost their lives in defence of the area’s wildlife

 

(Coming: Tarangire National Park)

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Tanzania 5

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Geology, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

cape buffalo, Defassawaterbuck, elephant, flamingo, grey-crowned crane, helmeted guineafowl, hippo, Hyena, jackal, Ngorogoro, Ngorogoro Crater, Oldupai, Olduvai, Rhino Lodge, Tanzania, vervet monkey, warthog, Wildebeest, zebra

Lunch on Monday, 15th February was taken under shelter at the Oldupai (the locally preferred name to the colonial Olduvai) Museum.  The renowned gorge is of great interest to anthropologists, archeologists and geologists.

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Approaching the Oldupai Museum

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From the top, ‘The Castle’ in the middle ground

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Flock of goats with goatherd

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We were given a talk, and I for one would like to have spent more time there, were it not that it was very, very, very hot, and air through our moving jeeps used to bring great relief.  As it was, we did not arrive at Rhino Lodge, that night’s accommodation, until fairly late, but not too late to see these in the grounds before it got dark around 6.30 pm.

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Defassa waterbuck

Another very early start the next day as we were going the wildlife treasure, the Ngorogoro Crater, and wanted both to see

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Sunrise over Ngorogoro Crater

and to  beat as many of the other jeeps as possible.

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At last an elephant!

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Helmeted guineafowl

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Zebra and flamingo far off, in the early morning light

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Zebra foal are brown and white

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Just a few of a large troop of zebras which went past us

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Playtime

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Warthog

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Always the crater rim as backdrop

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Spotted hyena

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Wildebeest and jackals

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Vervet monkey

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Grey-crowned crane

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We managed to find a rather out-of-the-way but approved spot to have our breakfast.

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– with conveniences!

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The pink sheen is flamingos on the lake

A drama unfolded before our eyes.  This was the season when within three weeks thousands and thousands of wildebeest foals are born, in time for migration.  They stand and can walk within a few minutes of birth.  Prey animals love this time of course, and we saw hyena and jackals hanging around.  At one point a mother and calf got separated – sadly it seemed that a tourist jeep was culpable – and our hearts were in our mouths as we saw the hyena looking to exploit the situation.  The calf vainly sought its mother, and in turn attached itself to first one and then another adult female.

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Wildebeest solidarity

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Hyena joined by jackal

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Amazingly, this jackal walked straight past these two – this is not the ‘right’ female – and the calf was able to rejoin the main herd, though we couldn’t tell whether it found its mother.

It’s getting very hot again.

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Cape buffalo

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We didn’t see many elephants in Ngorogoro

(To be continued)

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Tanzania 4

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Geology, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Cokes hartebeest, giraffe, Grantj's gazelle, hornbill, Hyena, Impala, lion cub, marabou stork, Ndutu, Shifting Sands, Tanzania, Thomson's gazelle, Von der Decken's hornbill, White stork, Wildebeest, zebra

The afternoon’s safari

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Marabou storks

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Thomson’s gazelle (with horizontal black stripe), Grant’s gazelle (without) and Impala (Tawny colour)

included observing how difficult it is for giraffes to drink,

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How do giraffes drink? Inelegantly

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Von der Decken’s hornbill

a herd of wildebeest and zebras migrating firstly alongside us and then crossing our path, many of the zebras stopping to drink, though not the wildebeest,

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Cokes hartebeest

and an enchanting time again, as night fell, with some lions.  It took some while for us to realise just how many there were in the heap and in the bushes, but in the end we counted seven cubs and three lionesses.  A delightful moment was when one of the latter just went and lay down on top of the heap of cubs.

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The next day, Monday 15th February, meant it was time to leave Ndutu and move on, or rather to retrace our path.  This involved a much sunnier drive across the plain than when we arrived, and some great wildlife moments: a spotted hyena washing its meat, dozens of white storks at a watering hole and wheeling in the sky (sorry, no decent picture of that), and baby Thomson’s gazelle and wildebeest.

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White storks coming in to land

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We also stopped at ‘Shifting Sands’, an isolated sand dune that moves under the effect of the wind, a most curious phenomenon.  Shortly afterwards we were out of the Park.

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(Soon: Ngorogoro Crater)

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Tanzania 3

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

African white-backed vulture, Dik dik, Lion, lion cub, lioness, marabou stork, Ndutu, Tanzania, terrapin

A shorter post today, but with our best lion experience yet.

Once again, on Sunday, 14th February, we set off in the very early morning.  We soon came across a mother with older cubs, much more playful than previously, and, with no other jeeps around hooray, we just enjoyed their company as they – some of them anyway, others, of what seemed to be four cubs in the greenery, just couldn’t find the courage – went up and down a tree just metres away from us, honing their climbing skills. All seemed happy to wander round and round our two jeeps, to our delight.

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After 90 minutes or so we moved off to a dead tree we could see in the distance, where an older lioness obliging posed for us.

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We took breakfast by the side of a nearby lake.

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Too small to identify?

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Marabou storks and African white-backed vultures

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Squabbling over prey

Late morning went back to see what ‘our’ lions were doing.  No surprise there, especially given the heat of midday.

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Dik dik

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(Awaiting identification)

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Back to the lodge for lunch in the dining room, which typically had no windows, followed by a siesta for some in the comfortable bedrooms.

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Dining room

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Bedroom

(To be continued)

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Tanzania 2

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Blacksmith plover, cape teal, cheetah, Dik dik, dung beetle, eagle, giraffe, grey-crowned crane, hoopoe, Lion, long-crested eagle, Ndutu, northern white-crowned shrike, secretary bird, shrike, side-necked terrapin, Tanzania, Thomson's gazelle, three-banded plover, vulture, Wildebeest

After lunch, a short wander round the grounds, observing this notice

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Board near our accommodation at the lodge

and this Dik dik

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No danger, though, from this,

and a rest, it was time for another trip out in the jeeps.

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Cheetah

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Masai giraffe

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Dung beetles. The dung is the size of a tennis ball.

 

Impressed by the antics of the dung beetles, I made a video:

Vultures like being near lions, hoping to help clear up after a kill. We just liked being near lions for sheer pleasure, in this case observing adult females and cubs doing nothing very much.

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Vultures in weaver bird’s tree

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Just too cute or what?

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Lions spend most of their day sleeping

We’d now arrived at Saturday, 13th February.

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Sunrise over the plain

Lots of lions again today, but no ‘action’, despite much soliciting by the females.  We stuck around them for much of the day, breaking for breakfast after a couple of hours,

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Secretary birds

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Long-crested eagle

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Grey-crowned crane, and missis

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Northern white-crowned shrike

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expecting action of some sort when another male hove into view,

 

(but it turned out they were brothers),

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Cape teal

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Blacksmith plovers

We went back to the Lodge for lunch and a rest from the fierce sun of the middle hours of the day. Later we returned to the marshy area to see what was happening.

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Thomson’s gazelle

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Side-necked terrapin

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Three-banded plover

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Hoopoe

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Juvenile tawny eagle

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Long-crested eagle

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Grey-crowned crane

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But all the lions wanted to do was to lounge around, at least until the sun was going down (around 6 pm) and we had to be away. They are entirely unfazed by human presence, though it would not be advisable to get out of the jeep.

(To be continued)

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Tanzania 1

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Musiewild in Cats, Photography, Travel, Wildlife

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Bat-eared fox, Blacksmith plover, Common jackal, Dik dik, Egyptian goose, Fischer's lovebird, flamingo, Francolin, Genet, Grant's gazelle, Hyena, Impala, Kori bustard, lesser flamingo, Lion, Lovebird, Ndutu, Ngorogoro, Ostrich, Serengeti Select Safaris, Spotted hyena, Superb starling, Tanzania, Tawny eagle, Thomson's gazelle, White stork, Wildebeest, zebra

This Saturday, 27th February, I returned from a fortnight-plus-travelling trip to see the wildlife of Tanzania.

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Ostriches

Over the next two or three weeks  I shall be sharing just a very few of the photographs I took of the rich wildlife that the country is conserving in its national parks.

We landed at Kilimanjaro Airport late in the evening of Wednesday 10th February after a violent rainstorm.  February is the middle of the wet season in Tanzania, though it has slightly less rain than the months surrounding it. Our leader, IW, had been fortunate in previous visits at this time of year in not having experienced much rain.  We had a fair amount over the two weeks though it only affected us seriously during the last part of our visit.

We (IW plus eight of us) left our overnight hotel in rain, which continued for much of the five-hour journey across the Ngorogoro Conservation Area to Ndutu Safari Lodge. We had first sights of many animals, but weather conditions did not make for good photos. We were pleased to be able to settle in our accommodation, and that the weather had cleared considerably.

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We enjoyed the view.P1170891

After lunch and a good rest, we went out for our first safari drive.

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Egyptian goose

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Blacksmith plover

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Tawny eagle

It was the time of the great wildebeest migration, and we saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these animals during our stay.

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Bat-eared fox

It was not long before we came across our first lions (thanks to the expert knowledge of the drivers of Serengeti Select Safaris who were with us for a week).

Apologies to those of a sensitive disposition. The male had two lionesses with him, mating with each turn by turn every ten minutes. The stand-off at the end of the encounter is because it hurts the female.

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White storks

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The knee-high Dik dik

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This beautiful nocturnal creature is a not a feline but a genet, related to mongooses.  We should not see it, but for years three of them have been visiting the dining room of the Lodge each evening, no doubt because they know that the kitchen will see them alright if they do.

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The following morning dawned grey and overcast, but we hoped that, as the previous day, it would clear up later. Our first viewing of the spotted hyena led us to consider that it was fluffier than it seems on TV, and not nearly as ugly as we had hitherto thought, even when carting off a baby Thomson’s gazelle to eat.

P1180341P1180359

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Almost immediately afterwards we saw a Grant’s gazelle in the minutes before and after giving birth.

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She had cause to be worried about hyena and jackal, but her only concern about this wildebeest is whether it will tread on her calf.

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P1180434

Kori bustard

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Common jackals

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P1180537

Lesser flamingos

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One of the most common birds around, the Superb starling

P1180580

Impala

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Francolin/Spurfowl

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Fischer’s lovebirds

Back to the Lodge for lunch.

(To be continued)

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