Advertisement
Published: July 14th 2019
Edit Blog Post
As promised, I said I would write a separate blog summarising most of the wildlife we saw between the 5 safari parks we visited. I'll list the animals in roughly the order of the numbers of them we estimate we saw in total:
Zebra: These were regular sightings at all parks, and often in their hundreds, if not thousands.
Wildebeest: With the Great Migration having already started, there were plenty of these around, mostly in packs but periodically a solo beast was found wandering by itself.
Gazelle: Two types appear - Grant's and Thomson's. They cropped up frequently, usually in groups of a couple of dozen or so.
Elephant: These were seen at most parks, but by far the biggest player was Amboseli, where we would see groups of up to 50 wandering around. An amazing sight!
Buffalo: Again, fairly frequent sightings, and usually in reasonably large groups.
Hippo: We saw plenty, but mainly submerged, in the Mara River, then quite a number in the marshes at Amboseli, but by far the largest number together were those nestled together in the river at Serengeti. However, I'm glad that smells can't be reflected in travel blogs!
Giraffe: Fairly frequent sightings, usually in groups of around half a dozen but on a couple of occasions we saw groups of over a dozen.
Baboon: These appeared from time to time on the roads as we travelled from park to park, but the most concentrated group by far was encountered just as we entered Lake Manyara.
Lion: We had multiple sightings at each park, which was a real bonus as these are seen by the guides as the 'main game'. All up, I would estimate we saw over two dozen lions, with a good sprinkling of male, female and cubs.
Impala: Not so frequent but probably seen in small groups half a dozen times.
Warthog: Tended to be seen either solo or just two or three. Not observed that often.
Ostrich: Maybe half a dozen sightings all up, usually in groups between two and four, usually with mix of male and female..
Hartebeest: Just the occasional sighting. Hard to differentiate from a distance from the Topi, Eland and the Waterbuck.
Topi: Similar to above.
Dik Dik: A couple of sightings of three or four. They are small and move quickly,
so hard to get a good pic.
Hyena: Only one sighting, of a group of eight, who were menacing a large group of buffalo obviously targetting a newborn in the group. They lost!
Monkey: We saw the Black-faced Vervet Monkey on two occasions, swinging from the trees. Very cute!
Eland: A couple of sightings only.
Leopard: We saw three at Mara but none elsewhere. Each was sleeping up high in a tree so hard to get a good pic.
Waterbuck: Only one sighting of a couple at Serengeti.
Hyrax: Seen during a lunch stop at Serengeti, nonchalantly crossing in front of various diners.
Mongoose: Similar to above, although I think we saw a couple of others scampering quickly across some roads.
Reebok: One sighting of three of them in the marshes of Amboseli.
Bushbuck: Just the one sighting of a couple at Serengeti.
Cheetah: One sighting asleep under a tree at Mara and another up a tree at Amboseli.
Crocodile: Only two seen - one in the Mara River eyeing off the carcasses of drowned wildebeest, and the other near the hippos in the river at Serengeti. I suspect
there were others around but we didn't waste too much time looking for them.
Jackal: Only one seen - running across the road at Serengeti.
As I said, there was some confusion identifying the various types of larger antelopes such as Eland, Topi, Waterbuck and even Hartebeest, so if I have these wrong, please accept my humble apologies. Next, I'll summarise some of the key bird life seen.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 9; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0293s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I love your pictures...
especially the leopard which was the only animal that we didn't get a good look at when we were on safari...the same parks you visited thus far.