The Masai Mara in August (1 Viewer)

Heavyweights

Having written about elephants in another post there are nonetheless
a few heavyweights remaining.

Rhinoceros is probably top on everybody's list to see. I've been
fortunate enough to see white in Kruger and black in Etosha, so rhino
wasn't very high on my list of mammals. The closest I came to one was
us hearing from another car that one had been seen in the area where
we were bird watching not that long ago. We decided to relocate our
efforts to the part of the brushy area where the rhino had been seen
last. One shouldn't imagine that such a large animal can actually
vanish in a landscape that looks as if it's mostly grassland, but
apparently the rhinos of the Mara have perfected that trick.

There aren't that many rhinos in the Mara these days - estimates I
found say about 30 or so, and they're black rhino. Poaching is a
problem as it is everywhere, and illegal grazing of cattle is
another. I saw cattle herds in the park (and herders on foot who
appeared to be tracking an animal), plus a dead cow. When grass
becomes scarce outside the reserve the locals think nothing of
encroaching on the wildlife in this way, and unfortunately the
authorities let it happen. Cattle are still the most important status
symbol among the Massai and one can only hope that attitudes will
change before too long.

A rhino that was lying down was found by one of our vehicles one day,
and the news was passed on to the others. I decided not to go for it,
but I heard in the evening that everybody who wanted to had seen the
animal, and that with it lying down in the grass it had been a
somewhat underwhelming experience.

Another real heavyweight is the hippopotamus, a species that can be
found in good numbers in all the local rivers. In the early morning
there are decent chances of finding one still on land before
returning to the water, always a somewhat odd sight. And, of course,
there may well be hippos grazing around your tent during the night if
there's grass to be had. Hippos are very quiet - all one hears is the
grass being chewed.

Our funniest encounter with hippos was one afternoon as we were
following a river. There were a number of hippos sunbathing on the
sandy shore, and for some reason they decided that something really
scary (presumably us) was about to arrive. They plunged into the
water with an impact that surely sent a wave all up the river!

I'll add another animal here, the Cape buffalo. These are common, and
photographing them was no problem, including young calves. Buffalo
are a species one should be wary off, and we did witness one very
interesting stand-off between a lioness from the Marsh Pride and a
group of buffalo. Clearly neither side had any intention of budging.

The lioness was wary, and clearly ready to move if she had to. The
buffalos seemed to be nudging each other, inviting others to go
first. `You tell her to get the hell out of here,' one could imagine
them saying. When nothing further happened for some time we decided
to go off.

Lion-buffalo encounters are reasonably frequent, but they mostly
happen during the dark of night. I heard that one of the lion cubs I
saw was later trampled to death by buffalos.

Andrea

1, 2. Typical views of hippo
3. Actuve hippo
4, 5. Hippo stampede

And some buffalos.

1. Very young calf
2. Stand-off
3. Family unit
4. Picture of contentedness
5. I like this one in black and white

kitefarrago said:

Owls, nightjars, hornbills, barbets

Barbets are another family that I had assumed to be more commonly
encountered. As it was we managed one sighting of Spot-flanked, and
one of D'Arnaud's. The latter bird was quite patient while I took
photos, if at some distance and under an overcast sky towards the end
of the day.

4, 5. D'Arnaud's Barbet

Click to expand...

Your D'Arnaud's Barbet is the subspecies sometimes split as Usambiro Barbet.

Nice report Andrea. Great place the Mara. We loved it so much first time round we went back there for our honeymoon!

Cheers

James

JWN Andrewes said:

Your D'Arnaud's Barbet is the subspecies sometimes split as Usambiro Barbet.

Click to expand...

I should probably have said somewhere near the beginning that I'm following the IOC taxonomy. I do indeed try to keep track of which subspecies I've seen where possible, to allow for future splits.

This is split in the HBW Checklist (they split this and Emin's Barbet from D'Arnaud's), based on wing and tail length, darker upper parts and bill and broader breast band.

Andrea

Honeyguides, woodpeckers, parrots, shrikes

For the majority of smaller birds it's certainly true that birdingfrom a car is not the ideal way of taking photographs. For this reason I'll be struggling to illustrate some of my posts. Nonetheless I really enjoyed the birding experience, even if it was at times frustrating that we could not enter small copses which clearly had birds in them, birds that for the most part refused to show themselves. We did have a couple of mornings were there were a lot of calls but not a lot of identifiable views, but that's all part of the fun.

When we were looking at non-stationary birds I always used my binoculars to get the best views I could manage. If the bird was around for a while longer, or if it was stationary (perched raptors at large distances) I tried to take photographs as well, and in some cases the photographs allowed for identification where the binocular view wouldn't (but then my eyes aren't as sharp as I'd like them to be). I did take notes, and where taking photographs wasn't feasible I wrote down descriptions. Sometimes those descriptions were good enough to identify the bird later and sometimes they weren't.

We had one encounter with a honeyguide. This is not a group I have much experience with, and it turned out to be an immature, where the`app as field guide' again proved its shortcomings (maybe it would have been better on a tablet for the larger screen). Embarrassingly I did not identify this bird while we saw it but from the copious notes I took while we watched it, when I had access to my paper copy of Birds of East Africa once I got home.

We saw two species of woodpecker, Nubian and Cardinal, both at a distance and for too short a period for photos. Given that there is a limited amount of woodland and that most of it is off-limits this isn't really surprising.

There's only one parrot in the area, Meyer's (or Brown), and we saw that roughly every third day. The views were never particularly good or prolongued, either of birds flying or of birds high in a tree.

Chinspot Batis was the only batis encountered, on two occasions, one of which was a `heard only' record. Brown-throated Wattle-eye was heard in camp on a few occasions, but seeing one was a different matter - I did get glimpses, but the identification was by voice and range. Fortunately it has a very distinctive voice.

Turning to the bushshrikes, Slate-coloured and Tropical Boubou gave us pretty much daily encounters (some of them show as `heard only' in my records), but I didn't manage a single photo of the latter. The song of the Tropical Boubou became one of the sounds of the trip for me. Black-backed Puffback we had every other day, Brown-crowned Tchagra every third (twice in camp). Black-crowned Tchagra we only found once, and we had Grey-headed Bushshrike on two occasions (once near Governor's Camp).

We had both Grey and Black Cuckooshrike on one occasion each, the latter a female. This last encounter was on my last full afternoon, when it was sunny and quite warm, and Simon found us a lovely clearing in a bit of woodland which had a lot of passerine activity (this is also where we saw the Nubian Woodpecker). We just sat and watched, enjoying it all.

The common Lanius shrikes in the Mara are the fiscals. Grey-backed and Northern we ignored after a few days which presumably is the only reason they don't appear daily on my checklist. We found Long-tailed Fiscal once, but since we didn't bother to look closely at fiscals after that I can't really say how common a bird that is. We did have one juvenile fiscal that gave us a bit of a chase before we managed to identify that to our satisfaction.

Given how often one sees Magpie Shrikes in Kruger I had expected these to occur similarly frequently in the Mara, but we only saw one party of four on one occasion.

Andrea

As I said above, I'm struggling with pictures for this group, so I decided to add some more lion cubs (one can never have too many of those, can one?).

1. Slate-coloured Boubou
2. Brown-crowned Tchagra
3. Northern Fiscal (juvenile)
4. Lion cubs suckling
5. Lion cubs playing at sunrise

Leopards

Time to write about this cat. Leopard is the one mammal everybody wants to see. Not just those on a two day safari because that's just what one does in Kenya, but also those of us whose only idea of a holiday is some kind of wildlife watching expedition.

I've stated this before, but it bears saying again. There were only two kinds of occasions where I saw drivers behaving really badly, and those were leopard sightings and possible crossings. It's as if somebody switched off the driver's brains and made them think of one thing only: How to get their vehicle as close as possible to the target, without any concerns for anything else.

My trip started very well, as far as this cat goes: On my very first afternoon (I arrived in time for a late lunch) we saw a female, first resting in a bush, and later with a fresh kill. Both these sightings were unproblematic, firstly because all that people did was drive up for for look and leave again when the cat wouldn't budge, and secondly because it was late in the day and there weren't that many cars in the vicinity.

The second encounter was rather interesting. There was a kill, but it was located in a ditch. The cat was very concerned with moving the carcass, but it seemed to be wedged in somehow and she found it impossible to move. We couldn't see into the ditch so it's not clear what the problem was. In the fading light we left her be.

Two days later there was my second leopard, another female. One of our vehicles had gone to a specific location in the hope of finding the local leopard, who was known to have a cub somewhere. They were very lucky and saw her kill a gazelle. They let us know, and we were close enough to see her make off with her booty. Since we knew about the cub we made no attempt to follow her. She's in the second leopard photo of my first post.

And two days later again, we were going on a bird watching drive when we heard news from one of the other cars that there were two leopards, a male and a female, near the Rekero crossing, so we decided that the birds would wait and made our way there. The two were on large boulders in the river, showing intermittently. It was a warm afternoon, and the cats seemed to be warm too. Later I heard a lot of speculation, whether this was a mating pair or whether this was a female with a grown son. It seemed that nobody was quite sure which male it was, whereas the female was readily identified, she's known as Bahati.

Everybody was hoping that as it was getting cooler the cats would actually do something. And indeed, with the cats not showing much interest in each other, the female decided to walk off. A completely crazy chase ensued, with bushes being flattened, cars coming close to driving into each other, and Bahati being supremely unimpressed. She walked very closely to the vehicles, somewhat to my surprise. She did, however, increasingly stay in the brush, and as I was watching the chaos around us the futility of it all became quite clear. Instead of finding a vantage point where the trail the cat was following would allow a bit of a view, and staying there in the hope of having a good sighting, the moment anybody became aware of the leopard all they could think of was drive closer. There were more than 30 cars in a smallish bit of scrub. I told Simon that we were leaving - I really didn't want to be part of this.

Meanwhile the male leopard had left a kill in a tree near the crossing, so we started the next morning by checking out whether he was to be seen, but then moved off to go bird watching again. One of my fellow guest stayed there all day, and he was rewarded with one visit and his chance to see the cat climb up the tree.

The next encounter with leopards comes a few days later, when we made the expedition into the area that also held the cheetah with the five cubs. There was a known leopard with a six month old cub, but getting there was a longish drive from our camp, requiring crossing the Talek river. By then we'd had a bit of rain, and the ford was in bad enough shape that we took on a bit of water.

Unfortunately it was a very dull morning. At the beginning there were just the three cars from our camp, just sitting there, hoping the young leopard might show itself. And so it did. It practised stalking wildebeest, and passed us quite closely, and then decided it was time to climb a tree. Meanwhile the mother stayed in a brushy ditch - her cub now old enough to be left to its own devices for a while. Unfortunately this peace was not to last. More cars arrived, and they all were here to see a leopard. And if the leopard isn't out in the open then clearly the thing to do is to drive almost into the ditch in the hope of getting a sighting. I'm still convinced that if all the drivers had behaved sensibly, just sitting back a bit, turning off their engines, and exercising a bit of patience, we would have got a repeat performance. But there were just too many of them circling the brushy area, desperate to show their clients a glimpse of these particular cats, and the peace we had enjoyed earlier was gone for the day.

All three of our cars decided to leave since there seemed no point in staying. The water in the ford was a little higher than it had been first thing, the night's rain working it's way down river. Unfortunately it rained so much in the following nights that the Talek became unfordable, and so no repeat visits were possible.

A day later in the morning we come across another leopard in the open, and that's the one in the first leopard photo in Post 1 in this thread. That was Bahati again. None of the other leopards showed this kind of confidence when encountering cars. Soon after she vanished into the brush where even the crazy ones could not follow.

For those who would like to it would be possible to try for more leopard encounters, and cut out some of those drives we took where we were fairly sure that all we would see were birds; but in August, when the Mara is busy, leopard sightings really are a bit of a circus. All the camps have radio in their car, and all the drivers have at least one mobile phone (and there seems to be a signal everywhere), so `controlling' a sighting is only possible if it's far from the beaten track, and if no car from another camp is present.

The drivers are all trying to make sure they keep their jobs, and get a decent tip, and showing their client a leopard is one of the things that will ensure that. Clearly in an ideal world the drivers would have no incentive to break the rules, and they would make sure that their clients don't do stupid things (like throwing rubbish from a car, making stupid noises to get a cat to raise its head, encouraging cheetahs to jump onto cars, and so on), but given the situation they find themselves in it's very difficult to condemn them.

Despite all this I felt very privileged to see leopards, and I didn't avoid them.

Andrea

1, 2. First leopard, resting
3-5: Leopard cub practising being a leopard

And some more photos

1. Leopard with kill (second encounter from previous post)
2, 3. Bahati in the 30 car scrum
4. And again a couple of days later

I absolutely LOVE the black and white close up of the Buffalo.

Reading on about the scrum to see the leopards, I can only agree with you about how distasteful it is and would also have left the rest of them to it.

Drongos, orioles, tits, larks, bulbuls

Black-headed Orioles were birds we saw more often than heard. They stuck to woodland, and typically stayed quite high up in trees. We didn't have any views suitable for taking photos. I recorded them every other day or so.

Fork-tailed Drongos were as ubiquitous as I'd remembered them from Southern Africa, and they were another on of those birds I relearned to ignore in our quest of finding new species.

We saw only one species of tit, namely White-bellied, on two occasions, both times while travelling upstream along the Olare Orok river. We did this a few times in the afternoons since it was conveniently located from camp, and since there were enough trees along the river to provide some decent habitat. It also meant we typically encountered the Double Cross pride of lions on our way back, once with a fairly recently killed male ostrich. The cubs were having some fun with the feathers.

We did not see too many different species of lark. The most common was Rufous-naped. I recorded this every third day but at the time I wasn't familiar with their voice and it's clear retrospectively that these were everywhere, and often the first birds we heard in the morning. Being somewhat unsure of our ability to identify the less obvious larks we didn't spend too much time searching these out. Beware that these seemed to be referred to as `Red-winged Lark' by at least some of the guides (presumably because of the obvious rufous in the wing) which caused me some confusion at the time.

We had Fischer's Sparrow-lark on four occasions, often in small group, but, for example, also a lone female. Red-capped Lark we had on three occasions. I also have one count of Singing Bush-Lark to report.

Dark-capped Bulbul is another bird that needs to be on the `learn to ignore' list. There quite a few of those around camp too.

Andrea

1. Fork-tailed Drongo
2. Fischer's Sparrow-lark (female)
3. Rufous-naped Lark
4, 5. Red-naped Lark

Swifts, hirundines, warblers

I almost forgot to write something about swifts. The reason for this is that we only saw swift sp and so they don't appear on my list of species seen. We only saw them on a few occasions, invariably flying very low over short grass, from above, for about the time it takes you to say `zoom'.

Swallows were much easier. We noted White-headed Saw-wing twice and Black about every third day. I'm sure that in particular the latter species is more common than I indicate here - looking out over the Mara River where there are woodlands and steep banks should have a reasonably good chance of success.

These banks are also good places for Brown-throated (or Plain) Martin, which we recorded pretty much daily. Banded Martin I only have on two occasions, but in the usual way once we had the expected species of martin we didn't bother to look too closely.

Wire-tailed swallow with its chestnut cap we had around every third day, and Lesser-striped three times (we found a nest along the Olare Orok). The only other swallows with a rufous rump that we could positively identify were all Red-Breasted, which surprised me a bit.

Both Simon and I found ourselves wholly unequipped to deal with cisticolas. They were all silent while I was in the area. I have almost no experience with these (I've knowingly seen Zitting and Desert) and I really felt I'd have needed somebody to talk me through the variations, and what to look for. Three species were identified from photos by Tib and Valery on the ID forum, namely Rattling, Winding and Pectoral-patch. Numerous cisticolas which weren't close enough to photograph remained `another <censored> cisticola'.

Other warblers we found were Tawny-flanked Prinia (three times), Yellow-breasted Apalis (twice), Grey-backed Camaroptera (three times) and Red-faced Crombec (just the once).

Andrea

1, 2. Red-breasted Swallows
3. Wire-tailed Swallow
4. Pectoral-patch Cisticola
5. Croaking Cisticola

Neglected mammals

I realize that as I was trying to group mammals for previous posts I now find myself with some odd left-overs that don't fit into the `heavy-weight', `small' or `antelope' categories.

So what is left? Well, one of the iconic plains animals, the giraffe. The form that one gets in the Masai Mara is, aptly, the Masai giraffe. We saw them occasionally, and they hardly ever `did' anything interesting. They're not easy to photograph well, and so I have only two kinds of pictures to offer. For one, an odd giraffe-henge. I'm not sure why they were standing in a circle, looking around them - we never saw what might have alerted them.

On the next day we found two youngsters who decided it would be fun
to train the fighting moves of the grown giraffe bull, and so kindly
offered themselves up as models. There was no force involved at all,
and so this was more shadow, rather than play, fighting.

The other stalwart plains mammal is, of course, the Zebra.The species in must of Africa is the Plains Zebra, the Grant's zebra subspecies. When the migration comes to the Mara a number of zebras travel with them. I love photographing zebras because of their marvellous patterns, but we somehow never found a suitable group when the light was good, and there was always something else to look for, so I didn't come back with too many pictures.

Warthogs are often overlooked. I'd be hard put to report exactly how frequently we encountered them, but probably close to every day. They tend to be somewhat shy in the Mara, and on only one occasion did we find one that didn't run off. On one occasion we saw a piglet (if that's what young warthogs are called), but that encounter didn't last long.

Then we have a representative of the carnivores, in the form of the spotted hyena. We found these, often in singles, often first or last thing, but the drivers know where the dens are in case somebody is interested in spending more time with hyenas. On one occasion we saw a hyena hunt a young wildebeest that appeared to have got separated from its herd. This was during dawn, and it was still fairly dark. We watched the wildebeest manage to put so much distance between itself and the hyena that the chaser seemed to be giving up, and eventually we moved on. The migration brings a lot of food into the Mara, and hyenas certainly profit from this time of plenty.

Lastly we come to primates. Not really something the Mara is well-known for, and the only expected ones are Olive Baboon, Vervet Monkeys, and bushbabies. We did see the first two (the second in camp). Baboons we seemed to find mostly near the marsh. No bushbabies in camp, unfortunately. I assume all camps have periodical problems with monkeys looking for food... Groups of baboons are often good fun to watch since with a bit of luck one can see some interesting interactions.

It's easy to become so caught up in the `more exciting' mammals (or the birds), but Africa wouldn't be the same without these less celebrated members of its fauna.

Andrea

1. Giraffes aiming for a mystical circle
2-4. Shadow-fighting
5. Warthog deigning to be photographed

1. Somebody's found food recently
2. Not quite fully grown
3-5 Members of the baboon tribe

Babblers and Starlings

Birds too common to be particularly noteworthy, but still fun to see, and the starlings are colourful compared with most European birds.

We found Black-lored Babblers on two occasion, and there were Arrow-marked Babblers in camp who really hated to be seen, but were all the noisier for it. I had some fun stalking them in camp, walking under the trees that are there to provide shade for the tents. I heard them a lot more often than I saw them, and pictures were not easy to come by. I didn't come away with anything worth showing.

There's a nice collection of starlings to be had in the Masai Mara, of the kind that even non-bird lovers like to look at because most of them are fairly colourful.

We found Wattled Starlings almost every day, but most of them weren't anywhere near breeding plumage, taking a bit away from the optical appeal. It was quite interesting to see that these starlings were usually found around herds, in an almost oxpecker-like way (but much more often found on the ground). Wattled starlings like zebras, oxpeckers prefer buffalo.

Greater Blue-eared Starling was daily, but for some reason all my pictures of glossy starlings are of Ruppell's Long-tailed. This bird doesn't appear daily on my log, but that's probably me not paying attention.

Superb Starling we had every day as well, and these colourful bird did interest all the photographers, even the non-birders that I encountered. Their cousin, Hildebrandt's, we only saw on four occasions (and I only have one not very good picture).

All these ground-dwelling starlings seemed to like areas with short grass, and they'd typically be found on the floor, flying up onto a perch only when they got a scare of some kind. The most confiding was certainly Ruppell's, no other species coming close.

The last starling in our collection was the rarest one, seen twice only, in the form of Violet-backed starling. Both sightings were brief and at a distance.

Andrea

1. Wattled approaching breeding plumage
2. Ruppell's Long-tailed
3. Superb
4. All lined up
5. Spot the starling

Oxpeckers, chats, flycatchers

We had both oxpeckers, with Yellow-billed being daily, while we noted Red-billed on two occasions. The former were easy to photograph, one just had to find a cooperative herd of buffalo. Some buffalo are clearly better hosts than others, or maybe they just provide a meeting place. We counted more than 20 on one animal once.

Both dark chats, (Northern) Anteater and Sooty, might have been daily, but once again I stopped paying attention to dark birds on termite mounds. But even so I recorded them at least than every other day. Nonetheless I didn't actually come away with any good photos. Getting close to them was difficult, and all dark birds demand just the right light.

White-browed Robin-Chat is a bird we saw on four occasions, but we never had good enough views to be worth raising the camera, and one of these records was heard only.

Every dark passerine that wasn't a drongo or one of the chats was a Northern Black Flycatcher, and we encountered those on four occasions, but only towards the end of my stay for some reason. And every paler flycatcher we could scare up was an African Grey, seen on two thirds of all days, despite my attempts to turn them into something else. And I still didn't manage a photo...

I know the following two birds are not true flycatchers, but they fit better into my account here. I can still remember my first paradise-flycatcher, from a driving jeep in India's Tadoba National Park, and I can easily invoke the image of a long white tail gliding like a ribbon through a shaded forest clearing. Maybe the fact that it was such a short encounter helped to fix it as a something quite magical in my mind.

African Paradise-Flycatchers were building a nest in camp, but the times I was around just didn't align themselves with activity. Maybe a more dedicated photographer might have skipped lunch to try and get some images - certainly when I tried after lunch I was never very successful.

In one of my favourite little pieces of woodland near Governor's Camp (not far from the marsh) we had an amazing breakfast picnic one morning a week into my stay. There was a lot of bird activity. This is when we saw Cardinal Woodpecker and Grey Cuckooshrike, for example, but also our first Woodland Kingfisher, and also, for too short a period, a beautiful African Blue Flycatcher, our only sighting of that species. I kept moving further away from the vehicle, itching to go birding, and poor Simon had to reminder me that we were still in the Mara, probably not too far away from the Marsh Pride, and with buffalo or elephant close by. Reluctantly we returned to the car, and I could tell that Simon too was torn. He made it his mission to find new birds on every single day, and he managed to do that.

Andrea

1. Young Yellow-billed Oxpecker
2. Small Oxpecker meeting
3. Sooty Chat
4. (Northern) Anteater Chat
5. African Paradise Flycatcher

Sunbirds, sparrows, weavers, waxbills

We saw one species of sunbird. Twice. I'm not sure whether it was the time of year, or whether we didn't find the right kind of habitat, but Collared Sunbird is the only one to make it onto our list.

I was expecting sparrows to be easy, maybe around camp, and at picnic sites, but we didn't do that well with these. Northern Grey-headed on four occasions, and the same for Yellow-spotted Petronia.

On to the weavers. We found speckle-fronted once, Baglafecht three times (a particularly showy representative near one of the picnic spots above the Mara river), Spectacled Weaver once, Holub's Golden Weaver and Village Weaver twice. Most of them weren't keen to be photographed. We also had a female/non-breeding male type Red-headed Weaver that kept us occupied for an embarrassingly long time before we identified it. It wouldn't show all of itself, and the reddish wing panels of the local subspecies confused me no end.

The only bishop we felt sure of were some Yellow Bishops who kindly showed us their yellow bits. Other birds in that group we saw were always at a significant distance, and none of them were in breeding plumage. I brought back pictures of a young Euplectes that even the experts over on the ID forum couldn't do anything with. There was one day when we saw a lot of birds fluttering around in small groups, but all of them were streaky grey brown, and none of them would allow us anywhere near them.

African Firefinch and Red-billed Firefinch we saw once each, one of these in camp. Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu we found roughly on every third day, whereas Purple Grenadier occurred almost every second day. One way of trying to find more sparrows and waxbills would be to specifically try all the picnic sites just after other groups have had a meal. We didn't try that, but some of our best sightings of these birds were at such locations. We were able to scare up one Common Waxbill, and Bronze Mannikins on two occasions, the latter in tall broad-leafed grasses near a swampy bit.

Andrea

1, 2. Baglafecht Weaver
3. Mystery Euplectes
4. Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu
5. Purple Grenadier

Great read ! Really enjoyed all of the photos too. Now Masai Mara has joined Kruger and Botswana's Okavango on my bucket list - the bank manager is not impressed. *sigh*.

Reptiles

I don't think the Mara is known particularly for its reptiles, but I'll write what I can here.

The largest reptile one might hope to see here is the Nile Crocodile. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures this time. To see one head for the nearest river and find a spot where they can haul out.When I arrived there had been a lot of crossing of the Mara river in both directions and crocodiles were already full. I even saw one or two carcasses in the river which went uneaten for days, with only Marabous showing an interest.

For those who want to see a crocodile strike at a crossing apparently the only safe procedure is to head to the Mara as soon as you get news that the migration is arriving. One of my fellow guests was a very serious hobby photographer from Singapore, and he plans to do just that. (He was serious enough to spend almost every day searching for crossings to get the perfect photo.)

By luck we found one rock agama. I assume that if one asks the drivers then they'll be able to suggest areas to try for these. They're very colourful, but the only one we saw scuttled off soon after we spotted him.

Monitor lizards we saw every time we headed to the marsh. I assume these are Nile Monitors but I don't know too much about reptiles. Light was a problem here for photography at times, with it being very bright and the nature of the terrain meaning one has limited control over the approach to the target.

We saw one leopard tortoise, but I can't actually remember anything about the encounter.

We only saw one snake, quite an impressive specimen well over a metre long, but only for a brief moment. Simon has posed because we'd noticed a raptor on the ground in tallish grass, and before we could do much more than lift our binoculars for a closer look a Black-chested Snake-Eagle flew off, carrying a long-ish snake. Needless to say it was long gone by the time I thought to reach for my camera.

Andrea

1, 2. Monitor lizards
3. Rock agama

Pipits, wagtails, finches, buntings

We're getting to the end of the birds, and I'm almost at the end of my report. I've got at least one more entry to go, and if anybody would like to know more about anything in particular I'd be happy to expand.

We saw two species of pipit, and while there were some individuals I wasn't sure of we were able to split the majority into Plain-backed and African (Grassveld/Grassland) with reasonable confidence. I did post a few on the I forum, just in case I'd overlooked something. Pipits did allow us to come fairly close, and so I came back with some decent quality photographs of these.

We found African Pied Wagtails roughly every other day, usually near water, and one Cape Wagtail that shouldn't have been there according to the distribution maps in Birds of Eastern Africa. We did see it on consecutive days at the swampy patch that also held the Greater Painted-snipe.

Yellow-throated Longclaws were ubiquitous and not at all shy, and I soon learned their calls (I had no time to prepare audio for this trip, I'd just studied the field guide). We recorded them every day, and some let us get quite close for photos. Their Rosy-throated cousins we saw on only three days, and never long enough for photographs. We only recorded them in my first week, but whether that had something to do with the subsequent period of almost nightly rains I couldn't say.

We found African Citril only once, and all the other canaries we managed to find (roughly every third day) were Yellow-fronted. Again we founded these seed-eaters to be fairly wary, and we only got binocular views of them.

We saw Golden-breasted Bunting as the only member of its family, roughly every fourth day. They seemed to like the ground around bushes.

Andrea

1. Plain-backed Pipit
2, 3. African Pipit
4. Mystery Pipit
5. Cape Wagtail

And some Yellow-throated Longclaws.