Serengeti National Park - Northern Serengeti - Day 2 - August 20

We had breakfast at the lodge and got our picnic bags for lunch to go.

 restrooms for the main lodge

 outdoor dining area of the lodge

 view from lodge at breakfast

Wow, what a full day today was. We came across a bunch of vultures eating a Wildebeest carcass. The Lappet-faced Vulture opens the Wildebeest as the other vultures aren’t capable by themselves and then they wait while the vultures are done to eat as they prefer the parts the others won't eat. Jackals and hyenas were waiting close by waiting their turn. One Marabou Stork waited as well.

 We saws herds of Wildebeest along the way

 Hyena running away from the dead Wildbeest

 Grey-headed Kingfisher

 Rueppell's Griffon Vulture

 Rueppell's Griffon Vulture

 Rueppell's Griffon Vulture

 White-backed Vultures & Rueppell's Griffon Vultures & Maribou Stork

 that's it, put your hear all the way in......

 White-backed Vultures

 Grey-headed Kingfisher

 Mara River

 another Wildebeest....

 Spotted Hyena

 Sure, we can make it across this dip in the road....Go Wilson!

 Warthog

 Baboon

 Wildebeest herd

Nile Crocodile

We headed to the Mara River in hopes of seeing a river crossing. Along the way we saw a heron stalk and eat a rat and then within a few minutes it stalked and ate a skink. We saw a lot of other wildlife along the way.

 Black-headed Heron stalking

 Black-headed Heron caught a rat 

  Black-headed Heron caught a skink

 it got wrapped around its' bill

swallowed it!

 Hadada

 Yellow-throated Longclaw

 Yellow-throated Longclaw

 Bateleur - baby in nest

 Bateleur - baby in nest

 Bateleur - baby in nest

 Bateleur parent feeding baby in nest

 Spur-winged Lapwing

 Red-necked Francolin

 Red-necked Francolin

 

 African Helmeted Terapin

 Nile Crocodile

 Yellow-billed Stork

 Topi

We got to see a mini crossing of Wildebeest. A mini crossing is when they cross a tributary of the Mara River. It was deep enough water to see their struggle to get across. The Zebras that were waiting to cross changed their minds after one went half way and it was too deep (who knew they don’t know how to swim) and turned around and went back.

 Wildebeest herd

 getting ready to cross

 crossing

 

Later we did get to see a few Zebras crossing the Mara as we were having our lunch. There were Zebras on both sides of the river and we waited to see which set would cross. Eventually the ones on our side of the river crossed. They are very careful to make sure there are no Crocodiles or Hippos. The water wasn't very deep and they made it easily.

 

After lunch we headed across a bridge past some quite pungent Wildebeest carcasses in the river on our way to the other side of the Mara River. Many Wildebeest get swept away while trying to cross.We also saw some giraffe.

 pungent Wildebeest downstream

 the flat top mountain is the Kenyan border

 Black-chested Snake Eagle

Black-chested Snake Eagle

 We actually crossed into Kenya at some point. We came across a mother lion and 3 young ones.

 the thin line in the photo is the antenna of our vehicle

 

Then, another highlight of the day was finding two Cheetah brothers playing and then stalking for dinner. However, a safari vehicle full of Chinese tourists pulled right in front of them and they quit stalking. These same Chinese tourists were the talk at dinner as apparently they jumped out of the vehicle at one point to run amongst the giraffes. Their guide couldn’t stop them. He did call and let the rangers know what happened in case anything went “wrong”. His company could be fined and they could be thrown out of the park.

 wouldn't you just love to rub it's tummy?

 marking the tree

 playing like kittens...you can see how close to the vehicles they were

 

We crossed back over the river and headed back to camp.

 more pungent Wildebeest

 Maribou Storks

 unknown birds....

 

Tonight’s dinner we were seated with different people. The manager sat at our table and she was going on and on about how their guides are the best and all the other guides are jealous because they have open vehicles. I don’t think anyone cared about the type of vehicles they used, but I think they were a bit “snobby” in sharing information while on game drives. All guides have radios so if there is something going on everyone knows about it. I kept noticing that the Asilia vehicles were rarely around the rest of us. Which really wasn’t a very “fair” thing to do if they indeed were keeping the independent guides out of the loop.

We left early right after dinner as we had to be up very early for the hot air balloon ride.