Out at 0630 to look for cheetah, having coffee on the veranda before leaving and met this dude. Never seen so much ennui in a monkey.

Long drive across reserve scanning beautiful lands for movement, and of course, Africa was just showing off. So much beauty.

Went to high spot to getter a better place to look for the cheetah, but he beat us to it snuck up to him in what I thought was a moment of cheetah indignity, but turns out to be just a really efficient way to change the scan angle from one side to the the other.

Clearly on the hunt, scanning for a good target. Efficiency and safety are key – an injured or sick cheetah is a dead cheetah, so the hunt has to be for something catchable, something that doesn’t fight back, and during a time of day that isn’t too hot. Fortunately this, meant lots of scanning and photo opportunities.

Grants gazelle herd nearby – yawn, stretch, limber up and off to the hunt.

But alas he was spotted. Time for a nap. Have to conserve energy. He lay down in the grass and basically disappeared. Johnson emphatic he won’t hunt until nightfall, unless a gazelle just walks into him.

Down to look at prehistoric tools – hand axes made from stone were found in the 10s of thousands here. They are clearly made for the human hand, and date back 1.2M years.

While we were at the river looking at evidence of 1.2M year-ago commerce, another land cruiser came and delivered our breakfasts. Johnson said we should head to the dam to eat by the lake.

Well, the lake was completely dry. It had been mostly dry, but the drought had finally sucked up the last of the water. It made for an amazing scene.

You could see where elephants had gone across looking for anything that remained.

The lake afforded me some opportunities to shoot little flowers growing on the banks. These were all super-teeny, but macro lens FTW.

• 

• 

• 

After breakfast, Heather wanted to find garanook for her friend and fellow travel agent Joanna. This started a quest that took us through several other animals. My team was asking for baby pics, so I grabbed a bunch. The cutest was probably the baby white Rhino we saw, so young its horn hadn’t developed yet.

Right next to her we saw an elephant nursing her newborn.

And a Zebra mom and baby,

Getting up to the garanook zone we saw Tik tik (teeny little antelope) hiding under a bush – a Marshall Eagle can actually take one of these on the wing!

And finally, the Garanook, which is a Somali word for “Giraffe-Antelope.” Didn’t capture any of their iconic tree climbing behavior, but got a couple of fun shots nonetheless.

Finally back to lodge for lunch, inspired by this guy on the way.

After a few hours of down time, we went out again at 1700 – mostly straight to cheetah, way back by the dam. But of course, gorgeous stuff in the way.

Back to searching searching searching – we think we are in the right area but no cheetah. But gazelle the gazelle get all nervous and then we hear lamb cry from another herd quarter mile away to our left. We move down the road.

Get there and no action we think they are spooking at a bird, then see an ear pop up from behind the grass. It’s our cheetah! The herd wasn’t spooking at a bird, the cheetah had taken a baby gazelle right under our noses.

We got positioned to watch (again, land cruisers are “no-op” for the animals and basically watched him chomp down the whole baby gazelle in an hour – occasionally poking his head up in case hyaena or lions coming. Cheetah have traded everything for speed – can’t defend their kills, so he was very worried about being noticed.

While drinking red wine in his honor, we watched his meal for a bit then headed back to the lodge for our own.

Back at camp we had great conversations with new guests and staff, g&t and an amazing (albeit vegetarian) dinner.