The Northern Serengeti, the only visitors in an area of three hundred square miles!

The Northern Serengeti lies just across the border from the Masai Mara in Kenya and I think this region is among the most beautiful in the whole ecosystem.  The Mara river with its crocs and hippos runs through here and the combination of grassy plains, kopje studded hillsides, riverside woodland and the ever present Siria escarpment to the west make for wonderful variety and beautiful scenery on our game drives. What also added to the magic was the fact that we were the only visitors in an area of three hundred square miles!  Most of the other visitors to the Serengeti were left behind at Ndutu and Seronera with the migration herds.  

There is often a build up of cumulus nimbus clouds in the late afternoons and these create some spectacular backdrops for our photos. The Cape buffalo and these waterbuck benefited from this backdrop and made the pictures much more interesting.

Although we had left the migration 250 km to the South we were not hard pressed to find good wildlife.  Every night we were serenaded by lions calling out their territorial roars and every day we were presented with an abundance of animals.  

One little animal I really like is the Klipspringer who lives up on rocky hillsides with his family.  The abundance of kopjes in the area meant that we saw these little antelope several times.


We spent over an hour with a large herd of elephant and their calves just watching them feeding, interacting and mud bathing. At one point they all stopped their activities and stood quietly listening to something beyond our hearing.  After a few minutes half the herd took off back the way they had come and over the hill came a teenage bull looking scared and panicky. I looked at where the wind was coming from and realised that this young fellow had probably stayed behind at some tasty tree or bush and we had arrived to watch the rest of the herd in the meantime.  He had probably then noticed that he was all alone and at the same time got our scent.  All of a sudden his teenage bravado and independence had deserted him and he began to call out in fear for his mother! Elephants have sub sonic vocalisations which we do not hear so we had missed all this until the herd had stopped to listen.  Anyway, alls well that ends well and we watched a reunion of trumpeting and excitement as he rejoined his family. 

On one game drive we startled this family of zebra who galloped off from the car.