Ram, Dona and I returned from our week in Mkomazi and Mambo View Point to Kiota (Nest) Guesthouse for a great rest. We were delighted to see Flora again and partake of her wonderful hospitality and cooking. The rest of our party, Ram's wife Dawn, our son Sid, and Ram's nephew Uri had arrived before us.
Our guide for the next three weeks, Douglas Duncan Simbeye with Dorobo Safaris, met us that evening for a pre-trip briefing. It was great to meet up with him again; Dona and I had him as our first guide in Tanzania in 2014 and he was terrific. We arranged with Flora to leave things we wouldn't be needing with her to save space in the vehicle. Mostly that was things like Sid's sleeping bag for when he was going to climb Mt. Meru later, and Ram, Dona and my sleeping bags from the previous week.
Flora fixed us a great evening meal, after which we worked hard trying to take pictures in the dark of a bush baby (Galago) which came down to a feeder full of bananas in the back yard. It had an amazing ability to leap from branch to branch.
Douglas met us the next morning after breakfast and we loaded up. It was a tight squeeze, and we ended up with a couple of things on top. That worked out ok because they were at the far back and we could still raise the roof to see out.
Then we all piled in and headed for the Ngorongoro Crater in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This year had been, and still was, particularly wet, so the entire countryside was green. We saw increased numbers of Maasai "permanent Bomas," small houses where a Maasai family had permanently settled but still herded cattle.
Ram and Dawn had the first row of seats. Dawn wasn't taking pictures except occasionally with her phone; Ram made up for that with two big lenses. So he had a pretty good shooting area to both sides and forwards, although the person in the front passenger seat was occasionally a bit of an obstruction. He was still pretty crammed in there with all that gear. Dona and I took the middle seats. One side of the back row was piled with our day gear, with an ice chest taking up the isle. Sid and Uri traded off between the shotgun seat and the other back row seat. So the person in the far back could easily shoot to either side and behind, and the person up front had a pretty wide arc available as well.
One normally tries to arrive at the crater first thing in the morning so you get a full day of wildlife viewing. We had three to four hours of travel first, so we only had the afternoon in the crater that day, but we were going to return the next morning and spend the whole day as well. There were a number of birds at the entrance station where we stopped and waited while Douglas checked us in.
There were some strange looking trees on the way down into the crater; they looked like huge succulents.
We also got a pretty good view of an African Hoopoe, much to Dona's delight.
The sides of the crater are forested, and they encroach a little onto the broad grasslands in the bottom. But most of the bottom is one big plain, full of potholes and small ephemeral lakes in the rainy season.
The crater is a great place to see mixed herds of iconic African mammals, and as we descended we encountered our first wildebeest and zebras accompanied by their calves and foals. There were both kinds of gazelles as well, with jackals hanging on the edges.
The best way to differentiate a Grant's Gazelle from a Thompson's Gazelle is that the white on the rump of a Grant's extends above the tail, as seen in the photo below; on a Thompson's Gazelle, the white does not go above the tail. In addition, Grant's gazelles have a much more noticeable vertical black patch on each side of the rear white rump patch. Many people think that if a gazelle has a black side-stripe, as in the photo below, it is a Thompson's, but that is not always the case; some Grant's also have the side-stripe.
The zebra were fun to watch with their relatively young foals. These are all Plains Zebra (Equus Qiagga), which you can tell by the fact that their stripes go clear under the belly. They were formerly known as Burchell's Zebra (Equus burchelli). Depending on the age of the on-line information you are looking at, this can make things confusing. I had to consult the ICUN database with the associated distribution maps and population data to get it (what I hope is) right. We enjoyed thinking about the evolution of the stripes; Dona told us current hypotheses are that they may help discourage biting flies, and that they help with thermo-regulation. While some studies have suggested outlandish, conspicuous patterns such as stripes may help avoid predation, current research suggests that is not the case for the zebra. Note how the youngsters (below) tend to have brown stripes.
Wherever there are large concentrations of prey animals, the predators and scavengers aren't far behind. In this case we found jackals and hyenas hanging around the edges.
This was calving time for the wildebeest; it is a time of plenty, and this was a really good year. There was plentiful forage, and lots of healthy wildebeest calves being born.
Once we got into the crater we were pretty much focused on large mammals, but we kept an eye out for birds along the way.
Many of the roads in the crater were impassable and closed as a result of all the rain, so we were limited in terms of where we could go. We had to turn back in a number of places. The animals probably thought this was great...
I've given up trying to identify the agamas we see. I thought this was a blue-headed tree agama, but after reading a bit more I'm not so sure. Anyway, they're cool.
As it had been (and still was!) a particularly wet year, there was quite a bit of water in the crater. As a result we saw quite a few water-birds.
I am always surprised and delighted when we find nests of ground-nesting birds with eggs or young birds in them. Especially when they are in plain sight and yet more-or-less out-of-sight! Such is the case with this Blacksmith Lapwing
We had pushed our time in the crater about as far as we could and needed to get out before "curfew" so we headed for the exit road. We tried to explore a little in the forest habitat at the bottom of the exit road before heading up, but it was too wet and we had to turn around. All in all it was a very satisfying first day for everyone, but particularly those who had not been to Africa before. We headed for the Ngorongoro Tortilas Camp where we were staying for two nights.
We were pretty tired, and were greeted at Tortilis camp with a hot washrag and a "Welcome drink," both much appreciated. But we were so tired we didn't stay up to enjoy the setting; we ate dinner and crashed. We wanted to be in the crater bright and early the next morning. Our tents were huge. A "single" was a tent with a king bed, toilet and shower, and would have been fine for Dona and me. Not knowing that, we had a "double" which had a king bed plus four bunk-beds, a toilet and two showers.
It was chilly when we got up. After a breakfast with lots of hot chocolate we headed out, enjoying the views of the highlands as we headed back to the crater.
At the entrance and on our way down into the crater we found a number of birds, some uncommon like the Purple Grenadier.
We didn't find a lot of flowers while driving around the crater, partly because we weren't allowed to get out of the vehicle and wander around; but we did find a few.
We also found the large round fruits of another plant, the Gomphocarpus physocarpus or African Milkweed. The flowers are visited by butterflies, but like most milkweeds all parts of the plant are mildly poisonous to humans.
We headed off in search of whatever we could find that was cool, but with an eye for big mammals.
We found a small group of elephants hiding on the back side of a hill. They seemed a bit curious about us and ambled over. It was nice to just sit there, us and them and no-one else in sight.
We noticed some crazy ball-like seed pods along the track; Douglas identified them as Gomphocarpus physocarpus. They contain cardenolides, a type of steroid, which make them poisonous or bad-tasting. The cardenolides are passed on to caterpillars of the African Monarch butterfly, which then passes them on to the pupa and adult. This well-known protective characteristic of the monarch is mimicked by other species.
We were headed to someplace Douglas wanted to go but there was a rhinocerous traffic jam between here and there. Since it was pretty wet and you're supposed to stay on the roads, we ended up turning around after a bit and heading off somewhere else. But in the meantime we got a good look at both a male and a female Black Rhinocerous (Diceros bicornis)
As we headed across the crater we saw a big herd of Cape Buffalo, but they were quite a ways away.
As we continued across the crater floor, we found a lone lioness for all appearances just lazing around in some tall grass. Some distance away, a lone wildebeest appeared to be grazing unconcerned. But Douglas knew better. Wildebeest are herd animals, not loners. We pulled over to watch and wait.
The grass was tall-ish, giving the lioness some cover. But it was not so tall as to conceal her completely. And the wildebeest was too far off. The wildebeest seemed to sense something wasn't quite right, but seemed unclear about where the threat lay. It moved off a short ways, out of the taller grass and into shorter grass. The lioness began a stalk, slunk down low, working her way closer. She paused once or twice when the wildebeest gazed her way. She made it as far as the end of the tall grass, but she was still too far off; as she began her sprint, the wildebeest recognized the danger and galloped off. The lioness recognized she had lost the advantage and gave up the hunt.
We continued on our way and came upon three lions and one lioness in heat. The dominant male bred the lioness every twenty minutes or so. The other males tried to sneak in but always failed.
We took a break at an established picnic area by a small lake that had hippos in it, with a few birds along the edges and shore.
Amidst a sea of grass we found more small herds of elephant and a few lions lying about. Whenever I look at pictures of lions lying around up close, I can't help but think life is bothersome for them — they are always covered with biting flies. Although this one below doesn't have too many on its face.
And as always, the birds. They brightened up our day whereever we went.
While not allowed to get out of the vehicle in the crater, Dona still managed to get shots of a couple of butterflies.
As the day came to a close, we headed back up the exit road and returned to Tortilis camp.
Tortilis camp sits in a grove of big spreading trees. The place is alive with the sound of birds, and at times apparently larger animals. We were always escorted to our tents by Maasai, who liked to point out the tracks of whatever large animals had been down the same path some time before.
The day turned out to be Dawn's birthday, and our hosts dressed her up, danced with her, and brought out a sparkler/candle to celebrate.
The next day we headed for the Ndutu area on the southern edge of the Serengeti. But before we headed out, we did a little birding around the camp. On the way out we found an African Harrier Hawk going after a nest, as well as some Jackson's Widowbirds.