Back home from Tanzania

I am back home from safari, and I will be writing up a summary from my 3 weeks away, including some gear talk and other misc thoughts on my experiences. It has been a busy week since I returned home, and the major challenge for the Biggs family was that our 2.5 year old son, William, was admitted to the hospital for a stubborn infection in his foot, which was originally caused by a simple splinter in his heel of his right foot. We have him back home now, but suffice to say it made us worried about his health.

Safari Update - Serengeti

Running Zebras

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. March 2011

Nikon D3x, 70-200mm f/2.8, 1/50 @ f/14, ISO 200

Today was our final day out on safari for this safari group, and my final one as well. I thought yesterday was incredible, but today was equal if not better. We didn’t get 1 more lion hunting a wildebeest, we didn’t get 2, but we got a total of 3 takedowns in plain sight within a span of 20 minutes. It was incredible. So the total kills for this trip was 4, which is a better batting average than any given year since I started running safaris. Heck, I am lucky to see 1 in a year, much less 4 in the matter of 24 hours. Amazing.

I didn’t get many photographs of either the chases or final moments, so I won’t post any online for the time being. I need some time to judge the quality of the images. Keep in mind that I really do prefer to post hopeful looking images, so predatory action isn’t something that I am going to be quick to post anyway.

The entire rest of the day was spent near water holes, as that success worked for us yesterday and today. We didn’t see any more action of the predatory type, however I did take some time to help people work on their blurred panning shots of wildebeest and zebras running away from water.

Tonight’s dinner back at Bilila was extremely casual and fun, given today’s wonderful sightings. I could see that some people had the images they were searching for, and I cannot wait to see what they have taken today as well as during the entire safari.

Safari Update - Serengeti

The Chase

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. March 2011

Nikon D3x, 200-400mm, 1/1600 @ f/5.6, ISO 400

Ok, where do I even begin? Let me first start off by saying that I am not going to write down all that happened today, other than one amazing wildlife moment. It was a moment that is up there with my best wildlife viewing moments over the past 10 years of running photo safaris in Africa. It was that kind of cool moment. So here goes.

We saw a kill. A good one, at that. We were sitting at a good watering hole, watching zebras and wildebeest come in for water. After about half an hour we saw a huge splash in the water as a lioness came running out of the bushes to chase the subjects were just photographing. I completely missed the shots, as we were in a bad location to shoot the lioness, but we did track her down afterwards. We noticed she was very very interested in the wildebeests that lay beyond the water, and she started stalking back towards the water’s edge. We moved our vehicle into position to anticipate where she would hunt, and right as we settled down…….POW! She was chasing after a couple of older wildebeest in hopes of having a nice meal.

I grabbed a few frames before she ran within my minimum focusing distance on my Nikon 200-400mm lens, as you can see in the following frame.

Whoops. The minimum focusing distance on the 200-400mm is only 6 feet. Nothing like a lioness chasing a wildebeest only inches away.

The lioness grabbed the wildebeest by the throat only a few feet from the back of my Land Rover, and the struggle only lasted about a minute as the wildebeest was brought to the ground. We had to maneuver the vehicle to be able to shoot from the windows, as the lioness was still trying to finish off the job, so to speak. Autofocus was a challenge, for sure, as there was waving grass right in front of her face. I had to tweak the focus manually, as autofocus just does not work in these situations. The best thing to do is to tweak it manually and stop down a little bit to make sure that you have enough depth of field in case you missed the focus.

…And the final shot

Lesson learned: always be ready for the action, and always decide ahead of time which lens you are going to use. The 70-200mm would not have been ideal for the chase, however it might have worked when they ran by the vehicle. That wasn’t ‘the shot’ I was after, so my 200-400mm was chosen and I went with it.

The rest of the day was also amazing, but in a very very different way.

Safari Update - Serengeti

Zebras at a Watering Hole

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. March 2011

Nikon D3, 200-400mm, 1/800 @ f/6.3, ISO 400

Today we said goodbye to the wonderful Kusini staff, and headed north through the acacia woodland towards the central Serengeti. We are spending the last 3 nights of this safari at the new Kempenski Bilila Lodge, and I can already tell you that I really do like the accommodations here. But I digress…

The morning game drive was fairly quiet until we got to the Moru Kopjes, where we stumbled on a lion pride with many young cubs. We didn’t have a long time with them, as they were rapidly moving from the open grasslands to shaded trees, and we were on our way within a few minutes. It’s funny to be so casual about passing up lion opportunities, but these safaris really do allow my travelers to get picky about which opportunities are good and which are marginal. I am spoiled, for sure.

When we made it to the Moru Kopjes we saw three female lions in the distance, as well as a solo female leopard out in the waving green grass. These weren’t photographic moments, but rather great sightings that make me think long and hard about walking out in the open in the middle of the Serengeti. I had that thought on my mind as we also came across two large male lions at the Masai paintings area. I am glad we noticed them first, as we might have had a problem on our hands had we exited the vehicle too early.

We had to fill up the vehicles at Seronera, as we were running low on fuel. I thought we would be at the lodge by noon, however we decided to stop at a watering hole to watch the huge herds of zebras and wildebeest come in to drink. We definitely found a HUGE chunk of the migration right in the middle of the Serengeti. I always like to have 2 camp locations when I visit the Serengeti, as you never know where the migration is going to be. The herds we saw today in the Seronera valley were fairly substantial, and I know how many we saw down near Kusini yesterday, which means the migration is splintered right now. It’s a really cool sight to see.

I really like to drag the shutter on these types of shots, however I decided to go for the fast shutter speeds this afternoon to try something new. I think it worked, and I am happy with the results.

Safari Update - Serengeti

We were out early this morning (duh), and we headed towards the open plains towards Ndutu. Since we are on the Serengeti side of the border, I suspected we wouldn’t run into many people at all today. Well, I was right, because Kusini is the only camp in the southern Serengeti National Park. There are many many camps and also a few lodges on the Ngorongoro Conservation Area side, but the two management areas really don’t have many people that move back and forth between the two, as the costs and logistics can get more than messy. I find it is easiest to make a decision which side to stay on and then just do it.

Other than our vehicles, there are only 2 others in the entire southern part of the Serengeti right now. You can really feel all of the area has been set aside for just us.

When we entered the open plains, we noticed a few lions who were walking towards a sizable water source. After about 30 seconds, we all noticed there were actually 12 lions in total, with adult females and subadult males and female. They were all running around, jumping all over each other with joy. It was great to have good subjects in the early morning light.

After a while, we noticed there were some hyaenas congregating for a huge standoff with the lions. One by one, the hyaena numbers went from 2 to 3, to 10, to 12 and then ultimately to 17. It was interesting watching their behavior, as they encircled the lions. I could tell there wouldn’t be a fight, but it was clear that the hyaenas weren’t going to let the lions take advantage of them in any way.

We followed the lions for about 2 hours, and left them when they finally settled down underneath the shade of a large acacia tree. We then drove around on the open plains, looking for interesting subjects. I thought it would be fun to try and get ostrich images, so we worked with a small group of them for probably 30 minutes. The problem with them is that they run away when you get close to them. My goal was to get them to run in the same direction our Land Rover was heading, but we didn’t have any luck today. Not a big deal, because watching them is good enough for me.

We went back to camp for a wonderful lunch, and then headed back out around 3:30. Again, we went to the open plains. We did follow a large herd of giraffes for a long time, and eventually they were tired of us and ran away. I decided to try and get them running, while bouncing around in our Land Rover at 40mph off-road. Oh joy!

Safari Update - Serengeti

Our drive to Kusini yesterday yielded very little photographic opportunities, primarily because of the torrential downpour, so we decided today we would ‘fact find’ to see where we could find large herds of the migration.

Our destination / turn around location was intended to be the Moru Kopjes, some 75km to the north. The drive to Moru took us all morning, as we stopped to take photos of anything we came across. There substantial hills, kopjes, acacia woodland and small savannahs in between Kusini and Moru, and we had a difficult time seeing much megafauna. The wildebeest just weren’t there, which contradicted scouting reports that they had been seen only the day before, just north of Kusini.

We did have some good sightings along the way, such as a battling pair of hooded vultures, a lone male cheetah (18th individual so far), a lioness in a tree and a nice herd of elephants in the open grassland. We had a proper picnic at Mawe Meupe, and recounted just how much ground we had covered. We also couldn’t believe that we had not run into any substantial pockets of wildebeest or zebra, however just as we were discussing this somebody noticed a few heads of wildebeest just west of Makoma Hill. Upon investigation, we found a huge population of wildebeest in an area that I would have never looked: an area that has 1 road in that turns into a dead end. I felt some stress go away, as this is something I love for my guests to experience. It doesn’t always happen the way I would prefer, but this time nature rewarded our hard work.

The afternoon was spent hoofing it back to camp, as we needed to cover a bunch of ground in only a short amount of time.

I didn’t have the time to process any images today, and will have a chance in the next few days to do so.

Safari Update - Serengeti

We drove around the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater early this morning, and as we lost elevation on the way down to the Serengeti plains we lost the green vegetation and cool highlands air. There is a section of whistling thorn acacia bushes that routinely have grazing giraffes, and today had a very nice congregation of them on both sides of the road. As a side note, I love shooting them in this area, as I am able to put the Serengeti plains as the backdrop.

We had some water on some of the roads heading down, and I can definitely feel that the long rains are almost here. It did rain both evenings when we were at Gibbs Farm, and it rained when we were in Ngorongoro, and now signs of recent rain in the southeastern Serengeti. Good news, for sure.

We made it to the Ndutu area in the late morning, and we ate a picnic lunch under a large acacia tree, which overlooked Lake Masek and its flamingos. After lunch the cyclone of water began. I mean really began. We had a solid wall of water around the swamps west of Ndutu, and our vehicles were sliding sideways because of the heavy rain and mud. I haven’t been in a rain like that in many years, and it was awesome.

The drive from Ndutu to Kusini was, well, interesting. The solid wall of rain and wind followed us almost the entire way, and I wasn’t able to take a single image today. Not a single image. The rain was so hard it would have ruined all of my gear, so it wasn’t worth it.

The Kusini area has some amazing granite kopjes, and the Kusini Camp is settled on top of one. We arrived around 5pm, as we couldn’t continue our game drive any longer due to the rain. Since arrived before sunset, we all showered and came and enjoyed one of the most amazing sundowner dinks on top of their central kopje. The staff placed large pillows near top for each of us to sit on, and hoisted up a drink cart for the serving of drinks. It is the small touches that matter in the hospitality industry, and the staff here have it nailed to a ‘T’.

After our gorgeous sunset, we had appetizers around the fire, and finished with dinner in the dining room. Not much else to add, other than today was a great day, even though I didn’t take a single photograph.

Safari Update - Ngorongoro

I think my guests were itching to see the Ngorongoro Crater, as everybody was rearing to go very early this morning, with no stragglers. I rarely have people who are late for game drives, and today was absolutely no exception.

We spent the bulk of the morning with lions, wildebeest, zebra, hyena and black rhino, however the absolute highlight was a pair of adult male lions right next to our vehicle. It is difficult to explain the feeling I get when I am only a few feet from such large predators, and today really hit it out of the park. They were walking, lying down, sitting up, you name it. We had different looks every few minutes. Our heading into lunch had many happy smiles on faces, for sure.

After lunch the awesome weather continued, as we had warm, direct light early, then soft light and spotty cumulus clouds for the afternoon, and then warm light at the end of the day. The highlights for me were 2 sparring male zebras, as well as 2 adult cheetahs only a few feet from our window. I blew hundreds of frames on my D3 as the zebras reared up onto their hind legs and tried to bite each other.

Ngorongoro is one of those wildlife destinations that rarely disappoints, and today was another day in paradise. I won’t see the crater again for another year, as I have other safari destinations planned for the rest of this year: Botswana, Rwanda and Kenya.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Serengeti, and will be staying at Kusini Camp in the southern end of the park. Rumor has it that the wildebeest have moved north from Ndutu, and we hope to see them somewhere between Kusini and the Moru Kopjes.