RFI: good safari combining Masai Mara migration and general wildlife (1 Viewer)

Please, help me choose a 2-3 week safari tour.

It should include wildebeest migration, crossing rivers in Masai Mara (the BBC crocodiles catching wildebeest stuff).
It should also give good selection of other wildlife, especially black rhino.
It should also keep an eye on birds.
If it includes spotlighting, it would be ideal.
I want a tour which is professional bird/mammal, rather than general tourist safari. I want also maximize wildlife viewing.
I would definitely save on quality of lodges.

Any advice? Local operator?

What about the timing? It looks that most tours target the area in April, but the wildebeest cross in late summer/autumn.
Are Golden-breasted Starling and breeding plumage Standard-winged Nightjar possible to combine with above?

One problem is that I find difficult to distinguish good wildlife tours from standard tourist stuff. Also, it is not easy to judge if a tour price reflects e.g. it goes 1 day into a place which deserves 3 days.

Please PM me if you don't want to advertise/criticize businesses publicly.

best,
Jurek

The Masai Mara becomes very busy during the migration. One way of mitigating against that is to have a private vehicle - if you don't concentrate on crossings, nor chase other people's predator signings, it is possible to have an area to oneself even then, provided one's camp is a decent distance from where the minibus tours enter the Mara. You don't say how many people are travelling in your party - private vehicles get quite expensive unless there's a group of you that would fill up a vehicle anyway. (Kenya has also become very expensive recently with the government hiking up national park rates significantly.) If you have a vehicle without people that don't belong to your group you can ask your guide/driver to be on the lookout for birds as well.

I was there during migration (in August) a couple of years go, but there were no crocodile strikes then. I've been told by the owner of the camp I stayed in that you only get crocodiles strikes very early into the migration, and after the first few crossings the crocodiles are full, and they can find enough animals that are injured by accident.

Also, the seasons have become less predictable in recent years, so it's become much harder to predict where the migration will be at any given point in time (and so when the first few crossings might be). While I was there it should have been the middle of migration season, but some of the big herds were moving back towards Tanzania. And then we got a bit of rain and they turned around again. I was very happy with the camp where I stayed, see website here. There's also a trip report here where you can find more detail of my time in the Masai Mara. If you are looking for a lot of info on what different camps within the Mara have to offer I would suggest Safaritalk, where there is a lot of detailed information available and people are usually happy to answer questions.

One of the other guests staying there was into wildlife photography in a serious way, and he said what he wanted to do in the future was for the owner of our camp to let him know the moment the first crossing occurred so that he could drop everything and travel to the Mara. His main objective was to photograph crossings, and he was extremely dedicated to that task, staying out the whole day in waiting for one to occur. Despite all this he didn't get the shots he was looking for. If crocodile strikes are a priority you have to time your stay very carefully.

There are a few black rhinos in the Mara, but they are rarely seen. If this is a priority then I would suggest also going to somewhere like the Laikipia are where private private conservancies have had good success with increasing numbers of rhinos on their land. However, a few months ago there were serious conflicts between tribal herders and private land owners due to drought, and I don't know what the situation is like there at the moment. The added bonus of that area is that it also has a good population of Wild Dogs, but the probability of seeing them depends on the time of year, and the conservancy you'd stay at. Black rhinos also occur in decent numbers in Nairobi National Park, so this may be an easier option. I don't know how hard it is to find them there.

Given what you say about your targets you'll have to do some travelling within Kenya, which means long drives or (potentially expensive) internal flights. I'd suggest carefully weighing up travel times.

I only stayed in the Mara so I can't recommend any operator for a more comprehensive tour, nor on the birds you mention.

Andrea

Thanks a lot, Andrea! Thanks especially for the explanation of occurrence of crocodile attacks on wildebeest and overcrowding of Mara.

I am one and would join a group. I would modify the question:

I am looking for recommendations of tours and tour operators (local or international), who offer 10-21 day safaris which include wildebeest crossings in Masai Mara, and combine it with other sites, and target both birds and big game (including less touristy species).