We have one last morning game drive leaving Samburu.
We watch a matriarch herd of elephants watch over an unhappy baby.
First the little one gave huge shrieks and all the females rushed over to it. Then the baby played with another young one and they appeared to squabble. Again all the older elephants rushed in to separate them.
A Somali twiga triumvirate munch leaves as we leave the park.
We’re heading south through Isiolo into the Kenya Highlands, along the edge of Mount Kenya. We pass the equator again at Nanyuki.
At Mountain Lodge, in Mount Kenya Park, we immediately see wildlife. A large group of black and white colobus monkeys are high in the trees.
This is a unique monkey. It has beautiful fur with a huge long tail and it has no thumb—only a stump. The colobus is herbivorous, with a diet of fruit and flowers, leaves and twigs—this is a perfect protected arboreal habitat. And loss of habitat is endangering survival of this species.
We take advantage of the knowledge of our guide/Ornithologist, Titus Imboma, the whole trip. He is from the Bird Department at the University of Nairobi, and he takes us on a tour around the lodge. He actually calls the birds in…
The Baglafecht Weaver in a coffee bush,
The White-Eyed Slatey Flycatcher,
The elusive Bronze Sunbird hiding among the leaves,
Then coming in for a landing.
Back at the lodge we go to the viewing deck. Sitting on stilts above the forest canopy, the lodge is reminiscent of the times William Holden and Earnest Hemmingway hunted in Africa. The deck--and bar-- looks like it could have been a hunting blind looking over a water hole.
This one is strictly for photographers! At the watering hole we see a warthog with a growing problem—its tusks are way too curly and will eventually cause him big complications.
We also see a buffalo, being cleaned by oxpeckers, nursing her calf.
We also watch colobus in the trees.
And we have a great view of the water hole from our rooms.
At night the water hole is beautiful. We hope to see something tonight.
And we watch as a Greater-spotted Genet feeds at the station that lured a chui (aka leopard) for up-close viewing a few days earlier.
We'll get up early tomorrow (surprise) to try to catch a view of Mount Kenya before the clouds roll in. No chui tonight.
