2017/09 Part 6 Samburu - Tue am Breakfast elephant |
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Tuesday September 26th
This was our last morning in Kenya, a sad milestone, but to be honest we were feeling our age. It was time to go home, or at least go back to England for our last week.
The baby oryx had died, not I think to anyone’s surprise. We had a yellow-billed stork striding past us at breakfast, and then a large elephant came by for its meal.
The area was known as the Elephant’s Bedroom before the camp was built and the elephants still think it’s theirs. This one was just eating the local shrubbery and of course I had to take a picture. I was promptly joined by a security guy who made sure I didn’t harass the elephant. Or get stepped on.
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Samburu Elephants' Bedroom Camp (1.19) |
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We had about three hours before our plane took off so Nzuki suggested a game drive along the way. We’d be covering the same ground as the previous morning so we might not see much that was new. Happily that prediction was wrong.
We saw the usual line of crocodiles along the sandbanks and then came to this
impala and her calf, a rare sight for us as we’d arrived outside the Serengeti’s February calving season.
This marabou stork was sitting and looking like a demonic penguin. But look at those feet! And then we found another squirrel, this time standing balanced on its tail.
And a pair of raptors, an augur buzzard and a tawny eagle sharing a tree, and a pair of Egyptian geese with a single gosling.
The bird with striped skirts is a hoopoe.
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Samburu Tuesday AM game drive (1.08) |
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We found this tiny ball of a bee eater which took off and showed us its golden underwear.
There were families of warthogs along the river bank. This one we 
assumed was the dominant male as he gave us a look that said “All these are mine”.
Then we found a parrot, an orange-bellied parrot to be precise. We had not expected to see parrots, and we didn’t get a clear look at this one. 
We followed it around the tree but it took off with a characteristic parrot squawk.
Mama baboon and child were hanging out on a log in the shade while this other hooligan was playing Tarzan.
As well as the baboons we had elephants, giraffes, and monkeys on our side of the river. Across from us the Samburu people were bringing their herds of goats down to the river to drink. They’d been allowed into the park because of the persistent drought.
We stopped at the Game Lodge again and these painted figures came from the Crocodile Bar.
The trees in their gardens were full of birds, a cardinal woodpecker and a
Van der Decken’s hornbill, and then a glossy black bird with a fine curved bill which I think is a kind of sunbird.
Then they were joined by a grey-headed kingfisher, more colourful than it 
sounds, and a pair of hornbills that arranged themselves in 
artistic poses.
Underfoot we had ring-necked doves and some superb starlings, always worth a picture with their iridescent blue feathers. We were strolling through the gardens looking for flowers and more birds.
We could hear Nzuki having an animated phone conversation. He waved us back and said we had to go. He’d just found out that we were flying from Buffalo Springs rather than the nearby Oryx airstrip. Even worse, we were leaving an hour earlier than we thought!
Nzuki roared off and got us there just in time. So we had a hurried goodbye and then we were walking between these stalls and out to the plane. We wondered what the chances were of carrying one of those skulls through Canadian customs!
We set down at another airstrip and there were more Samburu people in what we assumed was their traditional dress. It certainly didn’t seem to be too practical for carrying luggage around.