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A tale of two safaris - Tanzania 2016 (followed by Rwanda)


Zubbie15

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@@Zubbie15, Crater love/hate, either and, whatever, it always delivers incredible photos.

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@@Zubbie15. I'm just starting to catch up on some trip reports and this is really good. I love the comparison of the seasons you've shown so well in your photos. The mists especially are very evocative, they always add something to an image. I think you share the love/hate relationship with quite a few people as regards Ngorongoro.

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That third photo in post #50 (lions in the watering hole, expansive background) would be blown up and hanging over my sofa in a heartbeat if I took it. LOVE THAT. What a sense of space and atmosphere.

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Thanks @@elefromoz, @@twaffle and @@amybatt for the the kind words.



Crater, next stop



Once the lions had settled down, we continued along, and shortly came across a group of older male elephants by the road. Like a lot of the wildlife in the Crater, they were very comfortable around us, and gave us some nice poses. This was our last real view of elephants on the trip, and probably my favorite of the trip. So, this counts as a positive experience in the Crater. :)



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Very positive and brilliant colors in the crater.

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2nd image in post #54 is very pretty.

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More great shots @@Zubbie15 with so much atmosphere and colour. Agree with @@amybatt on that lion picture,fantastic. Count me in on the loving Ngorongoro side. I wouldn't spend a week there but I've visited all 3 times I've been to Tanzania and would go again in a heartbeat.

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Stunning, evocative elephant images from the crater floor - the color, brokeh and composition is excellent.

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Thanks @@dlo and @@AKR1! I have to agree @@dlo, if/when I'm in the area again I'd find it tough not to spare a day for the Crater.



More (good) from the Crater



After a while the elephants began to drift away, so we continued along our route. At the start of the trip, we'd told our guide that we had 4 target species - serval, caracal, bat-eared fox, wild dog - knowing that most/all of these would take some luck to find. Well, we did find 2 of them, but more on that later. In any case, I knew that the Crater was a reasonably good area to look for serval, and we headed off to an area that is often productive for them. Unfortunately, no serval, but we did see a black-backed jackal slinking off into the grass.



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Heading out of that area, we came down from a small hill, and ended up in the middle of a good size herd of buffalo. This would be our best buffalo sighting of the trip. They were quite relaxed around us, but based on the looks they gave us weren't very impressed with our presence.



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@@Zubbie15

 

Your landscape shots with wildlife are fantastic! The colours and the composition and the overall effect is stunning to my eyes!

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@@Zubbie15

 

Your landscape shots with wildlife are fantastic! The colours and the composition and the overall effect is stunning to my eyes!

Thanks @@xelas for the kind words, I really appreciate them.

Edited by Zubbie15
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A smaller visitor



While we were enjoying the buffalo, we noticed movement off to one side. It turned out to be a male Jackson's Widowbird performing a mating dance. This was fascinating to watch, but also a real challenge to photograph. He'd rise up out of the grass at slightly different locations, so it was hard to know where to aim. And when he did come up, it was just briefly and he was facing random directions. Just before we noticed him, a set of 2 or 3 vehicles had arrived with us at the buffalo, which seemed to be a photo workshop as they all had 1D/D4-style cameras and supertelephoto lenses. When the male would pop up, the sound of all the shutters on continuous drive was quite impressive.



Facing the wrong way...


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Still not perfect...


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Hmmm, actually head-on doesn't really work either!


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That's the shot!


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After a while, he gave up, and gave us a final shot of him resting before flying off.


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I hope the ladies were impressed with the widowbird mating dance. Nice job on your part!

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One would ask himself, did he learned the acrobatics in Cirque du Soleil ?!

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I hope the ladies were impressed with the widowbird mating dance. Nice job on your part!

 

Thanks @@Atravelynn, unfortunately we never saw a female in the area - perhaps that's why he decided to move on.

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Continuing along...



I realize that up to this point (the widowbird sighting was at ~8:50), we'd had a pretty good day of it in the Crater. Well, after deciding we'd had enough of the buffaloes staring at us, and the widowbird having flown away, we decided to continue along. It wasn't long before we saw a lot of vehicles driving relatively quickly in a specific direction, and I said "there must a rhino somewhere." We had a brief discussion about whether we wanted to go there, since we'd have some pretty good rhino sightings in the Kogatende area on our previous safari, but ultimately decided to head that way for a quick look since it was in the direction we were heading anyway.



Once we got there, it became quite apparent that most/all of the vehicles in the Crater were in that area. The rhino was quite a bit of a ways off to one side of the road, and slowly making his way away from the direction we arrived from, so we went around all the vehicles that were parked on the side of the road to get to the front of the line. Well, I counted up to 35 trucks before stopping, and there were definitely more there...



Rhino jam (apologies for the out of focus shot)


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The rhino was actually fairly far from the road, and not doing particularly much of interest at first. It did seem that it wanted to cross the road, but given the sheer volume of vehicles it wasn't seeing an opening it felt comfortable taking. Eventually, after taking some photos a lot of the vehicles decided to move on, and the rhino got to cross the road. (maybe we should start a new joke: Why didn't the rhino cross the road? Because he was in the Crater and there were too many vehicles). In any case, it was nice to see the rhino, but it was also our most discouraging sighting of the day due to the volume of traffic.



Distant rhino


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Still a long way off


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Crowned Lapwing wondering what the fuss is


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Finally across, after most vehicles had left


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As you might notice from the pictures, by now the sun had come out, and it got fairly warm, for a while.


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Thanks to @@michael-ibk bird thread I'm out of likes for the day but here's a virtual one for ya @@Zubbie15. I guess I've been lucky as I've only been to the crater in the winter and the crowds have never been that bad!

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Prey and predators



Once the rhino had crossed the road and started heading off, we continued on our way. In this area of the Crater, there were a lot of wildebeest, many with quite young babies. It was interesting to see, at one point, a hyena walking through the herd, where the females with babies were always shielded by other animals from it. We also saw a baby that must have gotten confused, or a mother that didn't know what to do - the baby was trying to suckle from the female, and the female was constantly pushing it away. We also shortly after came across a small pride (or part of a pride) of lions - this area didn't really have any trees, so they'd learned to take cover in a culvert that went under the road. We saw several of them go under the road, and you'd never know they were there. Not totally sure how I feel about that, but I guess it is what it is. Finally, we needed to take a bathroom break, so we headed toward the toilets in the Lerai forest, where we came across a single lioness lazing on a downed tree.



A tender moment


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The female that didn't want to nurse a very young baby


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Sparring males


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Zebra and wildebeest in the Crater


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Keep an eye on that hyena


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Lioness heading toward the culvert


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Male following her


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Lioness relaxing on a tree


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The last photo in post 59 is stunning @zubbie. Well done mate on a great TR.

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Thanks to @@michael-ibk bird thread I'm out of likes for the day but here's a virtual one for ya @@Zubbie15. I guess I've been lucky as I've only been to the crater in the winter and the crowds have never been that bad!

 

Haha thanks @@dlo, I had no idea one could run out of likes. Perhaps I'm too stingy with them?

 

The last photo in post 59 is stunning @zubbie. Well done mate on a great TR.

 

Thanks @@Hads!

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Continuing along some more...



After our bathroom break, we decided, since it was getting toward midday, that we'd start to head toward the main picnic area in the Crater. This meant passing back through the herd of wildebeest and zebra herd. Now, one of the reasons people decide to go to Tanzania in February is to see the wildebeest birthing. Since we'd seen a lot of very young wildebeest babies, we kept a close look in the herd to see if we could see any females giving birth. Eventually, we came across a cluster of 2 or 3 cars parked by the side of the road, and thought we might get lucky. It turned out there was a female just starting to give birth, with just a couple of legs sticking out of the birthing canal. It was a challenging thing to photograph, because she would keep moving around, and other members of the herd would pass in between us and her, and the sun would keep peaking out of the clouds, but it was an impressive sight for sure. We hadn't really prioritized seeing a birth on this trip, but I think our guide Mussa was at least as happy as us to come across this birthing, as we wouldn't need to specifically try to search one out when we got to Ndutu. In any case, here are some photos:



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Amazing wildebeest shots @zubbie

Edited by Hads
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Those are great shots and how very lucky to have caught almost all of the birth! We came across several "just" born in Ndutu like your last couple shots, but always seem to just miss the actual event. Good for you!

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Very special - a real privilege to witness this.

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Thanks @@Hads, @@amybatt, and @@michael-ibk, it was really special to see. We've had lots of luck with wildebeest on our trips, catching two crossings with minimal waits on our first trip and now this birth without too much effort.



This day is taking longer to get through than expected (and I realize I've fallen back on the "blow-by-blow" type of report), but there's only one more sighting to spend a lot of time on. Once the little wildebeest was up and walking, we decided to continue along as our bellies were definitely rumbling at this point. A nearby zebra was a little jealous of all the attention the wildebeest was getting, so we snapped its picture.



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For some reason, the lions we'd seen take shelter in the culvert had come up while we were away, and as we passed by that area we got another nice look at them. We could tell they were the same group as the male had a distinctive scar on his forehead.



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As we continued along and got toward the picnic area, we came across another small group of lions. Unfortunately for them, they were in an area where there wasn't much cover, and they were obviously quite hot.



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We had our lunch at the picnic site, watching the hippos in the pool. We then headed off toward the Sopa access road, which was an area that was really quiet, both in terms of vehicles and wildlife. After a while, as we had started to turn back, we heard over the radio some fairly frantic calls of "Mussa! Mussa!" Having now been out with our guide for roughly 3 weeks over two trips, we knew that when someone called him like that there was something interesting going on. We also knew, and he'd stay true to that this time, that he likes to have surprises, so he wouldn't tell us what we started heading off towards. What could it be?


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