I couldn’t believe my good luck. Not only were there two leopards, but they were in a wide open clearing with beautiful, soft morning light. I took this picture just before this leopard walked behind a bush and in between me cursing my periodically malfunctioning camera.
Shortly after both leopards crossed the road 20 feet in front of my car they slowly disappeared into the grass. This was one of the last photos I took before driving off to let them to find some breakfast. I think it was about this point that I finally took a breath and relaxed. Thankfully my malfunctioning camera managed to work properly for a few minutes to get a few great shots of these amazing cats but I was kicking myself for not getting the camera repaired prior to this trip. Regardless of all the shots I missed, this leopard encounter is something I will never forget.
Amboseli is synonymous with elephants. And while the elephants my look the same to the casual observer, every elephant in Amboseli has a name and can be identified by the researchers studying them. The Jane Goodall of the African elephant world is Cynthia Moss. She has been studying the elephants of Amboseli since 1972 and formed the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (http://www.elephanttrust.org/) which has resulted in a much greater understanding of these amazing animals and helped protect them and their natural habitat.
These two elephants had just finished dusting themselves with dirt prior to heading back towards Mt. Kilimanjaro. With no appreciable rain for over two years, the elephants have to travel long distances to find food and water. Thankfully, a few months after I had visited the park the rains finally came and almost instantly the land was transformed from a desert into a lush green savannah.
The old matriarch of the herd brings up the rear as two huge African elephants make there way across the dusty, dry earth of Amboseli National Park. I lost count of the number of dead wildebeest and zebra that had been affected by the drought. Once elephants reach about 5 years of age they become extremely drought tolerant. However, adult females will stop cycling until they build up enough fat reserves to support a pregnancy and often the young elephants will die during a drought due to decreased fat content of the mother’s milk and lack of vegetation. The adults are much more capable of traveling long distances to find food and watering holes but instead of moving in large groups, they break off into smaller groups in search of food and very little time is spent socializing and playing because all of their time needs to be spent searching and eating food to sustain themselves. The average adult African elephant consumes about 400lbs of vegetation a day!
There isn’t much that is better than relaxing at the end of a long day and watching a beautiful sunset, unless of course you are in Africa, where the sunsets seem so much more intense. Add in a majestic elephant and this was the perfect ending to an awesome day of game viewing.
The normally majestic looking giraffe appears quiet out of ordinary when it requires a drink. Giraffe can go long periods of time without drinking, which is probably a good thing because it is so awkward for them to bend over. Physiologically, giraffe have unique anatomical differences in their blood vessels to allow them to lower their heads from a height of approximately 15 feet above ground to below ground level without fainting either when drinking or when they quickly raise their heads back up to normal position. Giraffe also have exceptionally long, dark tongues (up to 17 inches) that are incredibly tough. Both males and females have horns covered in skin. When the males fight for dominance or a mate they stand parallel with each other, swing their head and necks outward and down until they collide together around chest high. In this photo the bird in flight is an oxpecker that couldn’t hold on when the giraffe lowered it’s head. It quickly flew back onto the giraffe’s neck and a few minutes later was inside the giraffe’s ear picking out insects.
These giraffe all lined near the watering hole at the Ol Pejeta tented camp. The adult male was keeping the three females close to him as a younger male had also made his way to the watering hole and was interested in the females, but it wasn’t reciprocated. Their are three species of giraffe in Kenya, with the other two being the Maasai and the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe which is pretty much isolated to Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya. It is estimated that giraffes sleep about 45 minutes a day and when a giraffe is born it falls about six feet to the ground!
This photo was just a matter of patience and timing. These two female reticulated giraffe had just finished drinking at the watering hole and were surveying the landscape. Everything from the mud on their feet to the position of their bodies matched up and made for an interesting photo.
As you can probably guess from these photos, I managed to get back to East Africa last month, specifically Kenya. The first part of the trip was for work as I was attending and instructing at the 2009 PASA (Pan African Sanctuary Alliance) Healthcare Workshop. Afterwards, I spent a week visiting Amboseli and Maasai Mara National Parks and went on numerous game drives. Over the next several weeks I will be posting the photos from my trip and brief stories about each one.
Although leopards are believed to be the most numerous of the big cats in Africa, they are very elusive and therefore, you have to be incredibly lucky to see one. Samburu National Park in Kenya is the best place to see leopard, but I wasn’t able to get a safari to Samburu this time. However, luck was still on my side, as this one was resting in a tree close to the road in the Maasai Mara. The foliage was very dense and initially all that I could see was a foot and a part of the tail, but after several minutes the leopard changed position and I was able to get this picture. After several minutes it climbed down the trunk and got a drink of water from the small stream below before returning to it’s vantage point in the tree. With it being the rainy season, the undergrowth was very dense and so all that we were able to see during this time were flashes of his spots moving amongst the vegetation. It was amazing to be able to see the leopard move without a sound and blend so well into it’s surroundings.
One of my favorite photos from the trip. This female spotted hyena and several others were observed during a night game drive at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy near Mount Kenya. She was initially laying down, but as we approached she slowly got up and walked past us on her way to what turned out to be a den site with many other adult hyenas and pups running around (photos to come in subsequent posts). The menacing shadow of the hyena makes this photo stand out to me and captures the perception of the hyena being a sinister night time predator.
Owen Slater Photography 