The queen of camouflage

Yesterday after dinner and a cold shower (we got in too late for the solar water heaters to have any hot water left - all of the water here is also trucked in), we retire to the lounge for a few well deserved beers before being escorted back to our rooms by a spear carrying guard who shines his flashlight into the grass next to the path to point out the animals.  We are literally in the middle of the Savanna and the guard points out 2 water buffalo lying in the grass less than 20 feet away.  He tells us that he has seen lions, hyena and leopard right where we are walking so we stay close until we get to our tents. 

We chose to get a later start on our only full day game drive here in the Serengeti, departing at 7am.  Most of the guests have already headed out as the morning is the best time to see the animals before the bright sunlight interferes with the ability to hunt and the day gets too hot so that most animals seek the shelter of shade and the tall grasses.  

Our morning is productive with sightings of baboon families, a pair of secretary birds names after secretary’s from the 1950’s who wore suits and wore pencils in their hair and a massive amount of hippos lounging in a river.  Hippos are active only at night and sleep during the day so we wait a long time before seeing any activity.  We stop by a watering hole to see some antelope and Cosmo asks who has good eyes and can spot the crocodile.  Nancy spots it on what I thought was a rock less than 20 feet away from where the antelope are drinking.  The antelope are not even aware of how close their are to taking their last drink. See if you can spot it in the photo. 

The first highlight of the morning is when we spot a lioness in the tall grass with her male counterpart.  The lioness is soon appearing very interested in some gazelles and makes her way across the road towards them.  She is about 50 feet away and crouches down in the tall grasses.  We watch in anticipation but the gazelle have soon moved off and she heads back so we move on.  

A short drive later we come across a number of vehicles that have stopped to observe a pair of female lions, soon we spot 4 more lions and it’s clear that they are all interested in a large bunch of Thompson’s gazelles in the distance.  As the cars maneuver around its very clear that the lions are using the cars as cover to get closer to the gazelles. 

We are mesmerized by the sight of six lions hunting in unison, weaving between the cars as they inch closer to the group of gazelles about 100 feet away in the tall grass.  Two of them take cover behind a termite mound waiting for the opportunity to make their move.  

Then, far on the horizon we spot some large shapes moving.  They are coming directly towards us and slowly the shapes turn into the largest herd of elephants we have seen so far on the trip.  Behind us in a watering hole are hippos are lounging.  Mutual of Omaha has come to life in front of our eyes and we’ve only been out for an hour. 

The elephants come right beside our car and pass by for about 20 minutes, unfortunately this has now interrupted the lions hunt and the gazelles have moved further away.  We are disappointed we didn’t get to see a hunt but the elephants more than made up for it. 

We spend the rest of the afternoon looking for a leopard and drive through a landscape of islands of rocky outcrops and flat topped acacia in the hopes of spotting one.  

The leopard likes the flat top acacia tree as it doesn’t have many branches to interrupt its leap to the ground to ambush its prey, the favourite being the impala who often take shelter under the acacia.  Here in the Serengeti there are two types of acacia trees, the flat top and the yellow bark acacia.  The latter is a telltale for where water can found and we see them spread out in lines following both permanent streams and laga’s (intermittent watercourses that only show up in times of rain). Giraffes can only feed on the flat top kind as the yellow kind makes giraffes sick with the “flu”. 

The leopard is known in the Serengeti as the queen of camouflage and you could be right next to one without even knowing it.  Cosmo stops the car suddenly and points out a small acacia tree and says see there is  one in that tree. It takes 5 minutes for us to spot it in the tree and all we can see are it’s legs hanging down, it’s lying on a branch sleeping.  Todays blog game is spot the leopard in the tree (hint, look on the left hand side of the tree in the photo below).

We pass by vast areas of the savanna that have recently been burned and I ask Cosmo if they have had lots of lightning and forest fires.  He remarks that the park is well managed and that these are controlled burns to regenerate the grasses for the animals.  The burns also prevent fires that start accidentally or by lightning from doing much damage as they create a fire break. Perhaps Canada could learn something from this as we seem to fight to prevent all fires due to our industrial forest complex having so much influence in our system.  Perhaps a good round of controlled burns every fall could prevent a season like we are having this year? 

With the sun beating down, all of the animals are taking shelter and the spotting gets sparse in the afternoon so we decide to call it a day and head back to our lodgings to get ready for our long travel day tommorrow to the Ngorongoro crater.