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Tales from Tinga: A Safaritalkers Safari to Zakouma


michael-ibk

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michael-ibk

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Paul is always complaining this report is too linear so I´m going back in time now - just have to add some pictures from our wonderful flycamp experience. I am really thankful that Nam Wan said that she would love to stay longer and even more thankful to Doug that he took her up on that and simply asked if it would be possible - I guess it would have occurred to none of us that it would even be an option. And I´m sure he did more than just "asking", he can be very convincing - just ask the Elephants he made stop in their tracks. :)

 

It would have been such a shame just coming to this wonderful place after sunset and leaving before sunrise and not having a chance to appreciate and enjoy it, and that´s what we did on our afternoon here. Napping, sitting by the waterline, watching Crocs and birds, soaking in the atmosphere - it was beautiful.

 

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What can be better than looking right up to the stars from your "bed"?

 

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There´s been a severe shortage of birds so I am amending that - White-Faced Whistling Duck

 

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Tinga Camp brought lunch and dinner down to us by car.

 

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A different angle on camp from our afternoon walk.

 

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Squacco Heron

 

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Pied & friend.

 

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The Kingfishers were provoking me - this one was hovering right in front of me before 06:00 in the morning. Wonderful ISO 8000 shot. ;-)

 

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Fortunately it gave me much better opportunities later in the afternoon.

 

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Croc doing siesta in front of his "house".

 

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Pin-Tailed Whydah

 

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Even with these neighbours ...

 

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... life is just good on safari!

 

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michael-ibk

Our short walk in the afternoon was not too full of action as the others have already remarked but still enjoyable. It´s always nice to do a proper bush walk, even without charging Elephants, Lions killing something or Dogs fighting Hyenas.

 

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We were all politely listening to highly fascinating details Doug was telling about some tree and plant stuff (and immediately forgot all about it 10 minutes later).

 

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We even tried these fruits - a bit sour but I quite liked them (a bit).

 

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The dry riverbed we were walking in.

 

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Cool pose, Doug and Joe!

 

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This is where we were watching the Buffalo from. Actually Doug had us retreat quite quickly when we were approaching the water and he saw the Daggaboy there but up there we were quite safe. And of course best place ever - this is where my favourite monkey decided to firmly join my team and made it clear in no uncertain terms what he thought of Paul. :P

 

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Buffalo stomping away after he realized we were watching him.

 

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A colony of Red-Throated Bee-Eaters - apparently they had already gone to sleep.

 

Our night drive was comparably unremarkable indeed, I did not say that just to make Paul feel better. At least it gave us a closer sighting of the Patas Monkeys.

 

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An African Savanna Hare (formerly known as Scrub Hare):

 

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And Genets of course - never seen so many of them like here in Zakouma.

 

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michael-ibk

And some more photos from our first lion morning - as you have already seen a much better sighting was to come but it was still quite cool that all of Doug´s tracking paid off and we did find them. 

 

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Early morning in Zakouma.

 

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Red-Billed Quelea

 

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The area where Doug suspected the lions would be - and rightly so.

 

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Almost all of the Vultures we saw here were White-Backed - not a single Rüppel´s, and just two Hooded and one Lappet-Faced were around.

 

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How do you find lions in here? Definitely not on foot we were all getting back into the car for locating them.

 

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The light was definitely better today - less dust in the air.

 

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Grey-Backed Fiscal

 

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Roan running away - this herd numbered more than 40 but they were very shy. The drive from the lion site back to Tinga was actually pretty slow, there was a long stretch where we did not see a single animal.

 

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Female Saddle-Billed Stork at the waterhole close to Tinga.

 

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Quelea fun.

 

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michael-ibk

Nothing much to add for our afternoon, the others have already perfectly covered that. Paul, love your pictures of the bloody cubs - great stuff! (I think it was right here that we were discussing the ancient "Does size matter" question - regarding sensors!).

 

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A cute litte Green Bee-Eater who apparently likes to hang out around Zakouma HQs.

 

While the others were taking photos of lions (how boring!) I of course focused on waders. B)

 

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Black-Winged Stilt

 

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Common Sandpiper

 

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Nonsense of course, we were just trying to pass time while we were waiting. Doug had made sure we were in a good spot - much to the despair of our poor driver Suleman who was unsure how to get us to here but our fearless leader did not care - he likes to challenge people. B)

 

It was a great relief when the lions finally popped up. All logic dictated they would return to the kill but you never know, maybe they´d find a better snack on the way? And it was a race against time, we were quickly losing the light now.

 

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These Giraffes were apparently part of the local suicide squad - they were approaching quite closely, apparently checking out what was going on, and we were holding our breath if maybe the lions would try to go after the calf.

 

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But nothing ever came of that, the peaceful Hartebeest massacre continued without any unduly interruption.

 

 

 

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gatoratlarge

My night drive photos are non-existent or not good at all but suffice to say after seeing the lion pride in the fading light as per usual we began a night drive...in fact, the 2nd to last night drive of our trip, under a brilliant sky full of stars, we headed back to Tinga Camp...we bagged another SERVAL---I had been 0 for 15 in previous safaris, but the final tally would be SIX servals so for that reason alone Zakouma will always be special to me, we also saw another African wild cat (these were getting to be a nightly ritual along with the spotted genets, the white tailed mongoose, the galagos and the civet cats which we saw almost every evening) somewhere along the way we added a side striped jackal (earlier we had seen what used to be a golden jackal, now called a golden wolf...)

 

What would we do on the final full day of safari?  Doug left it up to us, but we opted to follow his suggestion of driving to the far north of the park to some pans in an area called Tororo.  But first we would stop off at the hartebeest kill to see if anything exciting was happening...turns out a little ole hartebeest is an evenings work for three lionesses and their cubs!  There was speculation a male had joined in sometime in the night and dragged the carcass further into the bush but all we found were bones!

 

The lions for the most part were gorged and sleeping...but some of the cubs were working off a little excess energy which was great fun to watch...29186906_10156657542658488_675044769798764951_n.jpg.d01429c0ae9e10b5e73adda187f03ace.jpg29136650_10156657542618488_1213921419360911220_n.thumb.jpg.2901c17d55e85e1543e60c761410333b.jpg29136764_10156657542583488_2651770109352363367_n.thumb.jpg.daff55edb8389f6ce400f705be33de24.jpg29196389_10156657542533488_1726464959291269615_n.jpg.51ca955d08b129a90913810678bcf206.jpg29196532_10156657542573488_1040116283787533837_n.jpg.c76bc78a48787ec24d7ba82ae9ca76e5.jpg

 We pulled off at one pan and just marveled at the diversity of wildlife: in this pic a Kordofan giraffe drinks, tiang too, ostriches look on, a saddle-billed stork, woolly necked storks, egrets and herons, ducks, a sacred ibis and Abyssinian roller are just some of the species I can pick out...29196275_10156657541693488_3721849816142397535_n.jpg.33145427aec201f20981f51b2c0b5e73.jpg

 

We wound up at Tororo pan and a great plain opened up in front of us...we laid out mats under a tree along the pan's edge and had a cold drink and later lunch and tried to nap (it was pretty hot even in the shade).  It was clear that wildlife was very abundant but fairly far off, lingering in the more inaccessible areas of the pan...Doug thought something may have spooked them (not us) as giraffe and roan began to run...never-the-less, it was a good spot to watch birds and dust tornadoes seemingly springing out of nowhere and watch the mirages of giraffe, ostrich and roan on the other side of the pan against the tree line...

 

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Edited by gatoratlarge
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"Doug is running a very tight ship indeed." Just as expected.  I remember Doug telling us about a group he took somewhere and the lodge/camp would not serve breakfast early.  So he had his group up and underway when the breakfast buffet was just being set up.  Doug said he yelled at his group to grab something and keep moving so they could make their early start.  Doug understands it is not about "having fun." And I mean that in a very complimentary way.

 

Nice views and photos of all the patas.

Video to show the abundance is a good approach, @SafariChick

That red-throated bee eater is sheer opulence.  Does @AndMic have a new favorite kind of bee eater after this trip?

In focus or blurred the flocks are overwhelming!

The kite with the catch IS a tremendous catch!  You are getting better every trip with the birds @michael-ibk

On 4/18/2018 at 4:27 PM, ld1 said:

@pault I dream of affording this trip http://backcountryjourneys.com/great-walk-africa/

 

Tsavo was my very first Safari experience 29 years ago and I haven’t been back since. This trip might scratch that itch! 

What a way to start!

@pault I was going to ask if your wife helped you on with the wussy knee pads, when I read that she also helped you acquire your hat for the trip. Dressing Paul.  Looking forward to the photo of you in the rapper hat.  I am so, so sorry about the photo problem and the impending disasters that have not occurred as of page 2.  I was relieved to learn they did not drastically detract from the enjoyment of this very special trip.

@gatoratlarge that is quite a weather report.  It was great to hear Doug's voice explain porcupine togetherness on your video.  Love the silhouettes.

 

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SafariChick

I will add some of my favorite shots of the lions from the morning of our last full day. As @gatoratlarge mentioned, we went back to see them and there was pretty nothing left of the carcass! I took a photo of it for evidence:

 

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So the lions were just lying around and the cubs were playing. We came over to the side of the water that they were on this time, so we were a lot closer. I apologize for an inundation of lion photos - but they are just so cute! Believe it or not, this is me restraining myself :-) Note the nice full bellies on the cubs compared to the day before!

 

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The next three are what I call the ballet series - one cub stepping not very gracefully over the other:

 

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Edited by SafariChick
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Have just caught up on this wonderful trip report. Thanks to all for sharing!

Its really fascinating to hear the different memories everyone has taken away from the experiences.

 

The elephant encounters were great to read about, and the amount of roan you saw was unbelievable!

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Phew! This TR is relentless.

Whereas people usualy have to be prodded to complete their TRs in this case you guys are all queueing up to post your instalments. I guess as soon as a post goes live it stirs your creative juices.

Whatever the reason it is probably the most complete (intense) TR I've encountered.

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offshorebirder
6 hours ago, Soukous said:

Phew! This TR is relentless.

 

But in a very good way!

 

Thanks for the team effort everyone, this is lots of fun to follow and educational as well.

 

 

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@SafariChick, @AndMic, @michael-ibk, @pault, @gatoratlarge

 

I’m so enjoying reading this report I get a real sense of de ja vu, so many familiar places and sights, that look just as I remember except for the market visit which is fascinating as I’ve not done it, well and that rather over exciting encounter with the elephants, I’m quite glad that when we followed them on foot on our first safari that they charged away from us and not towards us.

 

Even after my own two trips I’m quite envious reading this, you certainly saw some amazing things and seeing so many elephants in the river like that, cows, calves and bulls is just fantastic, that should certainly count as a once in a lifetime wildlife experience, one that only a few parks like Zakouma can deliver.

 

Interesting sighting of the lions, I wonder if the fact that they left the kill unguarded is further sign of how relatively uncommon spotted hyenas are in Zakouma. 

 

@michael-ibk You saw some nice birds, glad to see photos of Egyptian plover and Viellot’s barbet, black-headed lapwing is a bird I’d hoped to see in Zakouma but didn’t, but I have seen it since elsewhere. That masked shrike was nice and a good sighting, I have seen this bird in Israel but not in Africa and certainly not in Zakouma. I’ve just checked on the West African Bird Database website, the first and only record for Zakouma was made by Lorna Labuschagne in 2015, if you have time I’m sure WABDab would be very grateful to have your record (and photo) and records of other birds you saw in Chad.

 

Just coincidentally while reading this report and @johnweir's report I saw that one of my Flickr followers has just been to Zakouma as well and is in middle uploading photos, I’ve no idea if my photos inspired him to visit Zakouma, I’m actually slightly more envious of his trip purely because before going to Zakouma he went to the OROA FR and saw the recently reintroduced scimitar-horned oryx. That for anyone thinking about going to Chad would be something well worth doing, at the moment most of the oryx have got collars on, in the future when the numbers have built up then there should be a lot more without collars which would certainly make for better photos. Great to see these animals in their proper habitat, I've only seen them grazing in bright green English fields in a couple of zoos which just doesn't look right, although if it wasn't for those zoo animals there would have been no oryx to return to the wild. I thought I’d include a link to his Flickr album

 

Chad album

 

Looking forward to reading about Tororo I’ve not been there, keep up the good work I had a quick count up and this is the 7th Zakouma trip report.:)

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Game Warden

I want to say that it is amazing that Safaritalkers have been inspired to go to Zakouma and are inspiring others to go too: you all deserve a hearty pat on the back and thank you for helping Chad, in a small way, through tourism and your follow up reports here and elsewhere.

 

Matt 

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offshorebirder

@michael-ibk - superb portrait of the Green Bee-eater!

 

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SafariChick

Thanks for all the nice comments, everyone!  @Soukous there was a little bit of planning and discussion behind the scenes between us as to who would write what but then it just kind of took on a life of its own and kept rolling, gathering steam as it went!  

 

Regarding Tororo, I had mixed feelings on it. It was a long drive to get there and it was a great idea to take a packed lunch. We were initially planning to stay there all day or at least until the heat of the afternoon passed. However, I felt that while we had some nice sightings on the way there (photos to come below) once we were there, as @gatoratlarge the animals were really far away. It was frustrating because we could see there were a lot of them but we couldn't get closer as the road only went so far, and it would have been hard to walk closer as it was very hot and we would have been very exposed and far from the vehicle if any predators were out there (just my thoughts - I don't think we talked about trying to walk closer). We stayed until maybe 1 pm I think? I think some people would have been happy to stay, and we WERE in the shade but it was still hot and I personally felt the animals were not going to come closer if they hadn't in the several hours we'd been there, so at that stage I felt I'd rather go back and have a shower and regroup. I think it was at least 50-50 on the decision but I can't recall exactly, and it might be that we settled it with a duel (I did have the knife from the market and Joel his whip) but in any event, we did end up going back sooner than Doug had initially planned.

 

Here are some photos I took but I think they were along the way, not right at the Tororo plains.

 

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Finally got a group of roan to stand still and look at me!

 

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These ostrich running along the road in front of the car reminded me of how guinea fowl do the same thing

 

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On 26/04/2018 at 3:42 AM, michael-ibk said:

 

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I can see Doug's influence rubbing off on @gatoratlarge.

"Get a move on guys" and joel all ready to whip out his whip to crack at the slackers.

 

Love all the photos of the group together. all the smiles and happy faces. and great camaraderie going on in all the posts - yes even those barbs betw @michael-ibk and @pault. It makes me wish that I was there to enjoy the spirit of friendship with you guys as well. 

 

Those lionesses and cubs looked like they really needed a good meal - and how great that you got to watch them have their first meal in probably many days. the cubs appeared to be in different ages - I assume they belong to all three lionesses ?

 

I'm with you @SafariChick - I could watch the hunt, but it'll be tough to watch the kill. 

 

@michael-ibk - love your bird photos, esp that pied with the morning sun behind - i thought that was such an artistic photo with the light coming through its wings. it looks like an angel.

 

 

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SafariChick

 I don't honestly remember the afternoon that well - but I will just put what I have in here and maybe some of the others can supplement and recall what else we saw!

 

Here's a few photos at the place we ate all our meals and relaxed - I think others have been posted but I will put in a few

 

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Two of the camp staff and our driver, Sulemon - he is on the viewer's right:

 

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our very own @michael-ibk taking a turn behind the bar:

 

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and a few photos from the afternoon drive 

 

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We were at a pan with many birds at around 5:30 and also giraffes - this brief video shows it nicely

 

 

The afternoon drive continued into our last night drive. Sadly we still found no honey badger, which @pault and I had been anxious to see, and also no pale fox on the whole trip which is odd as they are seen reasonably often at night there. We did see more serval (was it one or two? I can't remember but someone will!) and a hyena, the only one of the trip that I remember! My photos are poor but here is a little video of each.

 

 

 

I am sure my colleagues will add more 

Edited by SafariChick
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Very late with my contributions here again due to........ stuff......... and trying to post as soon as I can after Jane because I won't say much. 

 

One thing I don't think anyone mentioned from the evening the lions killed the hartebeest was the noise and action later on. As the light faded a flock of quelas came down to drink. There was only one smallish tree right next to the water and it was suddenly full of quelas. The lions were still feeding but I couldn't help but be distracted. Compared to some other days, and certainly to the megaflocks we'd seen pictures of, it was a smallish flock but they are always impressive and I thought it was quite idyllic  - lions feeding, quelas drinking (eyes left-eyes right). 

 

A blurrier style picture was the only choice given the light levels. 

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I might have though nobody mentioning this was due to intense contemplation of the lions by the others - after all we had barely seen any lions to date and now here we were with a glut of them - but that seemed very unlikely as the quelas kept on flying over the lions as they swapped to another tree before coming back to the best one for the water.

 

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And I don't know exactly how it happened but at one point quelas started flitting to another tree nearby and flew right by the lions, which caught the attention of some the lions, who would stare at the noisy, squeaking balls flying past for a while with more than passing interest, before returning to their messy eating. I remember one of the cubs being quite fascinated.

 

Obviously I don't have an accurate picture of this in the post-sunset light, but in the following picture those are not huge dust bunnies on my camera's sensor.

 

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And very shortly after, quela forgotten, scrapping for a morsel - since there was still a lot of meat left, I assume this was a matter of both starting on opposite ends and nobody being willing to let go when the inevitable meeting occurred.

 

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That wasn't much....... will try to post a bit more later.

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Going back even further, remember the photo Michael posted in his official intro? Don;t look now if you don't - I'll post it again in a moment. Why and how? might have been questions. Not how as in "Wow! How did you do that?" But why and how as in "Why did you take it like that and how did you end up with that as your only photo of the whole group Paul?" 

 

"Because it was me and the photo gods were having a laugh in Chad." would be the short answer. The long one is that I took a rather unusual Fisheye attachment for a Sony 28mm lens I have. The unusual thing is not the attachment (such things are widely available and I recommend they be avoided) but that it is actually rather good- see the photo - the quality really is not bad at all, although it fades rapidly towards the far edges (few fisheyes don't). Anyway, I planned to use it for some wacky portraits in Chad, although it was actually along for Ethiopia afterwards. My card, drive and battery issues (and nearly 3 days away from my gear) had meant that I hadn't even got it out, so i took it to HQ because they have that fort like building and it seemed like a good candidate for a fisheye shot. I don't remember how the whole group ended up in front of that building - I may well have suggested it and then everyone thought that was a jolly idea, or it could have coincidentally been suggested by someone else (a fairly obvious choice I think). Anyway, there everyone was and I was lining up a shot when along came Linny (I am ashamed to say I honestly don't remember her name so I'll take others' word for it) and decided she's do everyone's shots - and it turns out she is a more than decent photographer so although I tried to put her off taking one with mine, she would not be dissuaded. I would be in my photo! I tried to set it up as carefully as I could because a fisheye is a lens that can turn a small change in angle into a massive distortion but of course there wasn;t much time, so I just got it as good as I could and told her not to move - take it from right there. I tried to get Doug on the end so we had bookends too, but for some reason it didn't work out - I think Doug wanted to be central for obviously fair reasons. And of course despite my pleas both Linny and the group moved and Joel got even larger while my wife got even smaller, and of course Linny was not the same height as me and......... well, there we are. I'm not saying a bad shot (slimming and heightening for some!)  but frankly it would have been a better shot without the fisheye adaptor. And then I never got a change to use ti again, so I can't show you just how good it would have been. 

 

That's my story and I am sticking to it. ;)

 

Joel, his friends from Austria, and the kids (Doug's growing fast isn't he?). Look at the feet and note how I rotated it right a bit to counteract the effect too!i-t3D43Gz-XL.jpg

 

The night drive after the lions was one of the less exciting ones, although of course it was great to see another wildcat.

 

Next morning it is playing snap with Jane again, and Joel too! But I've got a few extra this time as the lions were much more spread out and we were on the same side of the water as them.

 

A little one while it was still getting light

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Here's the missing next frame of Jane's ballet series...... @michael-ibk or @AndMic may be able to take it on another movement?

 

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Mum, Mum... wake up. I've been speared! ( Another way to view the scene of the mother and cubs that Jane posted a really nice photo of)

 

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Eyeing things up

 

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And another shot of the tug of war

 

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I remember looking for Tororo with Andreas on the map. It seemed quite far away and Doug was clear it was an all-dayer (although if we found nothing we would abandon) and I think everyone was on board with that. We had had that great sighting of the lion pride the night before and I guess everyone was (like me) "feeling lucky", so let's go - as long as we could pop in to see if the pride were still there first. Well they were, and if the outpouring of photos above isn't clue enough we stayed rather longer than we probably expected. In fact the clearing sky was not the all positive thing we had expected when complaining about the dust. Without the softening dust the light was getting super bright by maybe 8 am - not much later anyway. First issue with that was blown highlights in photos and heat messing up the bokeh - I like how @gatoratlarge has rolled with that in his giraffe shot! The second issue was it was getting bloody hot by not much after 9, and rising even further from there.  Phew!  This was more like the Chad we had expected. 

 

Some stuff on the way (amazingly the same animals... are you surprised?)

 

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The roan were on the way, while the heat was rising but still quite bearable and just starting to get hazy I think.

 

Floppy-eared youngster.

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A little older...

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And full grown...

 

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I'll try to post my memories of Tororo some time tomorrow (but don't wait for me guys - that's definitely a "maybe"!). 

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SafariChick

@pault I love your 'missing frame in the cub ballet' to my shots - yours is particularly good as it shows the cub practically standing on the other's head!  The tug of war ones are nice too. And the fisheye lens story is interesting, I don't know if I even realized that's what you used for that shot til now!

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michael-ibk
On 4/27/2018 at 8:56 PM, inyathi said:

I’ve just checked on the West African Bird Database website, the first and only record for Zakouma was made by Lorna Labuschagne in 2015, if you have time I’m sure WABDab would be very grateful to have your record (and photo) and records of other birds you saw in Chad.

 

@inyathi

 

First of all, no, thank you really. After all, none of this trip would have happened without your intrepid frist Zakouma recce trip so we´re really all in your debt. Glad you´re enjoying revisiting Zakouma with us. I will provide a full bird list to WABDab once I´m finished sorting through everything, still have a bit to go - struggling with my Weavers especially (those non-breeding guys are tricky). If you (and other "birdier" folks) are interested I´m in the process of uploading  shot of every species photographed over on my Big Year thread. I´ve not posted all of them here on the report.

 

 

 

 

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michael-ibk

Sorry, my PC and me aren´t friends today. Triple post, don´t know why.

Edited by michael-ibk
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michael-ibk

Sorry, my PC and me aren´t friends today. Triple post, don´t know why.

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michael-ibk
On 30.4.2018 at 8:24 AM, pault said:

And I don't know exactly how it happened but at one point quelas started flitting to another tree nearby and flew right by the lions, which caught the attention of some the lions, who would stare at the noisy, squeaking balls flying past for a while with more than passing interest, before returning to their messy eating. I remember one of the cubs being quite fascinated.

 

That was very cool indeed. Light was already a bit too low for my camera but here´s a shot of the lioness watching Quelea.

 

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I probably enjoyed Tororo more than Jane and Joel - it was a very cool landscape and while it´s true we were on the wrong side of the pan for mammals I loved sitting in this place in the middle of absolute nowhere, being the only human soul near or far (at least that´s how it felt) and I would have happily sat there all day long watching the raptors and the Quelea. But I´m getting ahead of myself.

 

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We saw Side-Striped Jackal a couple of times - and Golden (Wolf) once as I remember. They were quite shy, and this pretty poor shot taken very early morning is unfortunately my best photo. As Paul has already remarked the dust had settled, and this gave us our first semi-proper African sunrise - Andreas was very happy about that!

 

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The others have already excessively covered the lions so I will resist the urge to post more photos of them.

 

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I´m sure everybody is much more interested in this Green Sandpiper.

 

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So it was already very hot indeed once we finally embarked up North!

 

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Feeding Kordofan Giraffe

 

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Quite fascinating how they manage to enjoy their meals in the middle of all this thorny stuff.

 

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Greater Blue-Eared Starling

 

A typical Zakouma setting:

 

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Kob in a pose which cannot be too comfortable.

 

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Sorry for another Roan photo of exactly the same bull the others have already posted - it was such a nice specimen.

 

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One of the pans halfway to Tororo:

 

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Sacred Ibis

 

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Wooly-Necked Stork

 

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A lot of stuff going on here. Heat haze was already quite a major issue. But a really gorgeous and unique setting - where else in Africa do you get scenes like this?

 

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Lonely Waterbuck

 

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Red-Fronted Gazelles again - as the trip progressed we would get better and better sightings.

 

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Open wetlands in the middle of the dry grass.

 

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michael-ibk

It was 09:00 when we finally arrived at Tororo - and blistering hot.

 

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If one´s lucky this could be an absolutely spectacular place. We saw hundreds of animals, Roan, Tiang, Kob, Giraffe - problem was they were sticking to the treeline on the other side of the pan, far away from us, and most of the time they only were mirages to us. I´m sure that didn´t have to do anything with us - they were already far away when we arrived, apparently they just liked that side better that day. No roads there, and walking wouldn´t have been possible at all. The pan is a wetland after all, I´m sure we would have some fun stuff happen to us if we had tried. :)

 

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One of the few bigger mammals closer to us - but this Waterbuck definitely did not want to linger.

 

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Run Forrest Run!

 

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We made ourselves comfortable underneath a tree like this, lying on the mats brought along for us, snacking peanuts, sandwich and enjoying cold drinks - and trying to cool ourselves with the few icecubes in the cooler box. I was fascinated with the amount of raptors up in the sky - Marsh and Pallid Harriers, lots and lots of Kites, Lanner Falcons, Kestrels, dozens and dozens of them. Preybase must be incredibly rich here in Tororo.

 

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A distant shot of a Sahelian specialty - a Grasshopper Buzzard.

 

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This Short-Toed Snake-Eagle was apparently checking if we would have something tasty for him.  I was actually a bit disappointed when I IDed this bird, I had first hoped it would be an Audouin´s Snake Eagle (another special one in the area). These two birds look very similar but Audoin´s underwings are not as barred.

 

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Tawny Eagle - this was our only sighting of the trip. This is normally the default Eagle on a safari but not here - as mentioned before Long-Crested Eagle took its place of the most common species.

 

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Again the Quelea made for quite a spectacle.

 

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After 2 1/2 hours of not much happening some of us became a bit twitchy. Jane and Joel thought it would be better to leave while Paul and me (a remarkable alliance indeed) preferred to stay and wait for what would happen here in the afternoon. Andreas and Nam Wan did not have too strong opinions but were more inclined to do something instead of sitting around.

 

I wanted to settle this with a good old duel and was ready to battle it out with a good old fistfight, ready to deck Joel, but than Jane unsheathed the dagger and Joel cracked his new best friend, the whip he always carried around now, and that was it then - unarmed as I was I know when I am beaten. (It could have happened like that, or we could possibly also simply have voted like grownups but that would be too boring.;))

 

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Gymnogene on the way back.

 

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Brown Snake-Eagle

 

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This was one of the biggest Roan herds we saw. More than 40 animals (they were streched out quite far so it was impossible to get all of them into one frame). Zakouma is without a doubt one of the very best places to see this magnificent animal.

 

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We did worry that Doug was having too little do to given that he was just the front passenger and was getting lazy. So we decided to have fun dropping stuff out of the car so he could get the training to hop off and run back to pick up everything. First Joel lost his hat, then Andreas and then Paul. And let´s not even talk about Jane - I don´t think we had a single drive where she did not drop or lose anything. If she was generous stuff landed just on the floor of the car, if she felt Doug needed some excercise it was out of the car. The way this went she simply could not have just "dropped" stuff, I´m sure she must have deliberately thrown it out. Hats, Bandana, lenscap, even her phone(!), no matter, everything has to go seemed to be her motto. There must be a psychological term for it - philiaresemittendi or something like that. Poor Paul and me were especially traumatized when she chuckled and confessed "Oh please stop, I dropped something out of the car." - "Again? What is it Jane?" - "Oh, just my camera." she said with perfect stoicism. "Your Ca-ME-RA?" We could not believe it, our mouths dropping, our faces long with disbelief, our eyes wide open with terror. And Jane just shut us up with a "Yes, my camera, why are you so shocked?".

 

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"Her camera? Seriously?"

 

 

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Since we only returned to Tinga at 15:30 we did an abridged afternoon game drive - only got going at 16:00. (Nam Wan decided to sit this one out and relax in camp.)

 

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I was wondering again if I could still feel the G&Ts from last night when I was seeing double.

 

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And again - Red-Fronted Gazelle, our last and best sighting (from a photo point of view).

 

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We drove to Mashtour, one of the nicest places in the park from what I´ve seen of it.

 

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This is Spur-Winged central - hundreds of waterfowl were gathering here.

 

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Spur-Winged Goose

 

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White-Faced Whistling Duck

 

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Kordofan trying hard not to be blinded by the Quelea flocks whishing around it.

 

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Our very last (or actually the first) Zakouma "sunset".

 

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Our last nightdrive was really cool. Suleman told Doug that the airstrip would be a good place and indeed it delivered. Lots of White-Tailed Mongoose, Genets of course, probably Civet (not completely sure), and most important - three Servals and a Spotted Hyena. That was just wow!

 

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1 hour ago, michael-ibk said:

The others have already excessively covered the lions so I will resist the urge to post more photos of them.

 

Oh bollocks, I´m such a weak person so here are some more from that morning.B)

 

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Edited by michael-ibk
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