The Serengeti - Part Two

After game drives each day, we returned to our tents and to some surprisingly
wonderful meals prepared in the field by the camp staff.

And yeah, the Serengeti is a noisy place at night but we all slept well anyway.

 

 

 

  

Our campsite was also populated by a large number of babboons -- I counted
on the order of twenty-some individuals from our dining tent one afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

On one of our game drives, we encountered packs of hyenas running across the savannah
converging on an unseen point. It was exciting to see so many packs coming from so many directions --
all making bee-lines for a single fresh kill site.

It was if klaxon alarms were going off all over the Serengeti.

 

It wasn't too hard to find the kill site. Dozens of hyenas were fighting over the carcass.
Some folk commented on how shark-like the hyenas' behavior was.

As usual, the hyenas ignored the presence of all the converging vehicles (a kill site being more popular than
a lion sighting) until I climbed up on the roof of our minivan to get a better angle on this scene.
Several of the hyenas were a bit surprised and upset at my appearance and howled at me.
Not that I was terribly interested in stealing what was left of that wildebeast.

It wasn't long before the vultures were descending on the remains.

 

 

 

 

  

There's a heck of a lot of interesting birds to be seen in the Serengeti
like this big ol' "secretary bird" pictured on the right above.

I've never been much into birds, but there's such an amazing variety to be found here.

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There are massive creatures like eagles, vultures, ostrich and storks
and beautiful blazing color in birds like the "superb starling" (never did get a good shot of
its brilliant blue wing span).

  

 

 

 

 

Ohhh, another magnificant cat... the cheetah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, check out the blue-balled monkeys!

Okay, well actually, they're vervets or "green monkeys" but the males
do have very bright blue balls!

 

 

 

 

  

There are so many more creatures running around this place that I haven't even mentioned yet:
turtles, foxes, mongoose, elephant, leopards, hunting dogs,
bongo, jackals, genet, civet, mambas, chameleons....

I'll feature some of these in the Ngorongoro Crater segment
but it's not like I got pictures of
everything that lives here...

So how about some giraffe instead?

That's a long way up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our last day in the Serengeti, as we were driving to Oldupai Gorge,
our driver somehow managed to spot this serval cat.
This wild cat is about the size of and looks very much like a typical domesticated cat.