TAN: Roaring in Ruaha

We up early to get a bite to eat before heading out on a game drive at 8:00 a.m. This morning we have Corado again as our driver and a gentleman named Joseph as our guide.

Spotted this baby bird on our porch last might after dinner. The ants have made short work of it. A male agama lizard. The females are black with light yellow markings.

Billy, the bull elephant that terrorizes the camp sporting a fifth leg. The baobab trees are in bloom.

This giraffe seemed undisturbed by our presence. An Egyptian goose. They have beautiful iridescent purple wing feathers.

Most of the animals are extremely wary of us and are ready to bolt if we are judged a threat.

Much as I am just happy to be out here, we are in desperate need of some big cat footage for the DVD project. Amazingly, within an hour we are rewarded with a sighting of a solitary male lion in the riverbed. He is a ways off and as we drive towards his, we spot another male and a female on the riverbank. They move off into the bush as we pursue the first male. Passing a truck from another camp, our guide and driver converse with their counterparts in the other vehicle. They find that there is a large group of lions lounging on the other side of the riverbed a ways upstream. We slowly make our way over to the spot and find a group of fifteen lions lounging in the shade. They are resting after a kill, the remains of which are still being picked at by a few of the lions and a pair of vultures. We watch the group for a good half-an-hour; changing positions a couple of times for different viewing angles. We finally move on when another vehicle approaches. We drive around for another hour or so before heading back to camp for lunch.

The young male lion who eventually passed within 5 feet of our vehicle.

This group of fifteen lions were resting after having killed a buffalo.

The early afternoon’s work is interrupted by the arrival of several elephants next the cabin Gabriel and I are in. We are offered another game drive at 4:30 p.m. Gabriel and Julie opt to stay in camp and edit. Chantal and I get some good shots of large group of storks, cranes and pelicans as well as a large baboon family spread out in two huge trees. Joseph finds some chunks of Euphobia (a tall cactus-like plant) near a watering hole. He is very distressed by this and explains that poachers put the Euphobia pieces in the water to kill the fish in order to harvest them. The distressing part is that a lot of other aquatic life is also killed but left to rot.

Some of the shore birds and the baboons in a distant tree.

We are back from our drive just before dark to hear that a group of hyenas is in camp and it is not safe to be out on foot. We are picked and driven to the riverside dinning hall. The omni-present Vlad from Lazy Lagoon has caught up with us again. As we board the safari vehicle to return to our cabins after dinner our flashlight beams pick out the eyes of a dozen hyenas in the bush, their retinas reflecting back eerie shades of green and orange.