Another day, another area to explore at the Samburu Game Reserve! In the beginning, we thought we were going to explore the same areas at Samburu that we explored the previous day, what do you know, the place is ginormous!!! The gate we entered last had the zebra stripes, this one has the giraffe pattern! =)
The first animals we saw, was the zebras! We saw two types of zebras in Kenya, and this is the second type, that our guide just named as common zebra. Hee-hee! Aren't their stripes just lovely?
Here's a dik-dik, or as we were joking to our guide, a "Richard-Richard". Har-har! =D Isn't it cute? And by cute, I mean small... The dik-diks are small, maybe the size of a chihuahua! Hehehe!
I think our guide said that this is a lilac breasted roller... I looked up some pictures online and it doesn't look like this bird at all... Anyways, in my memory, this bird is a lilac breasted roller. Hehehe!
Notice the long necks? We thought at first that they were impalas... Then we started thinking, how come they are standing up on their hind-legs to eat? The neck looks a lot longer too, like a giraffe! =) Our guide said that these are gerenuks, but we prefer calling them the giraffe gazelles! Hehehe!
I didn't realize there are different types of ostriches. This is a male blue-necked ostrich. You'll know if the ostrich is male because their feathers are black and white! Female ostriches are brown. I believe our guide on the Mt Kenya trail mentioned that the name of the country, Kenya, came from the word "Kiinyaa", referring to Mt Kenya, which looks like a black and white ostrich, and if you think about it, the mountain does look black from afar and if there was snow on it, it would look like the black and white male ostrich feathers!
It was funny, have you noticed we haven't seen as much wildlife so far this day? Our guide also wondered about it! It's like all the animals were hiding! We didn't even see any elephant! The day before, whenever we spotted elephants, we were like, oh, it's just elephants... hehehe! Well, I guess it was okay, we still saw different things, mostly the birds now, and we started really looking at the landscape there. This is a desert rose bush. Isn't it beautiful? It's a splash of color among the brown grass and little bit of greens around!
This are yellow billed ground horn bill I think. Aren't they cute? At first, we only saw one, then, what do you know, there was two of them! I love the yellow color of their bills!
Yey! More elephants! Hehehe! You can't tell from this photo, but elephant tusks are not the same length. They said you can tell whether an elephant is right handed or left handed by looking for the shorter tusk. If the left tusk is shorter, the elephant is left handed. This is because, for the left handed elephant, they use their left tusk more for rooting around, which gets filed I guess. We learned so many things, didn't we? Har-har! =D
Hahaha! I can't remember the real name of this bird now... All I can remember is our nick-name for it, the "take a look at me" bird! Hehehe! It's because of their teased hair! It's like telling us, look at me, look at me! =D
Can you see the tree with a bunch of nests hanging from the branches? Those nests belong to weaver birds! The weaver birds creates lots of decoy nests, so the eagles won't be able to steal their babies from their actual nest! All the work they have to do, huh? Oh yeah, the weaver birds were also really colorful! We saw yellow, red, white weaver birds! =)
We have seen enough elephants so far, but this was still a wow for us! Elephants crossing the river!!! The thing is, you know when you watch nature shows, when you see elephants in single file, they look like their connected, trunk to tail... This was not like that at all. Still pretty cool though!
A herd of elephants showing their best sides to us! =D
Our very first mother and cub lion! The mom wasn't too happy with us, can you see her sort of growling at us? There were actually two cubs there, the other one is asleep! =)
We did not stay here, but just stopped by to use the wash room and cool off with a drink. Isn't the place lovely?
This are Samburu people. The top photo shows Samburu men doing the jumping dance. They said the higher they can jump, the better to attract the girls! The girls also showed us one of their dances where their necklaces seem to fly in the air! We tried it and it's really hard! Or maybe I just don't have the dancing genes! Mweheheh! Can you see their houses? The houses are made of sticks and cow dung! We went inside one and no, there was no smell at all from the cow dung walls... They told us that they are semi-nomadic, staying in one place for 6 months, then they pack up everything, breakdown their houses, collect the sticks and build a new home in their new location. And guess who builds the house? It's the women! It's a completely different way of life! Of course, at the end of our visit, they sold us their crafts, where all the profits goes to the community for everyone to share, so it doesn't matter who you buy from!
Aren't the giraffe's cute? Hehehe! Our very first family of giraffes!
A pumba! We found out that pumba is not a swahili word for warthog! Ngiri is the Swahili word for warthog! Can you tell I've seen Lion King one time too many? Hehehe!
Love the bulls-eye on the bottom of this common water buck! Hehehe!
Finally, baboons up close! Hehehe!
A hare! Look at his ears!
Can you believe that's a termite mound? It's gigantic! And look at the acacia tree growing on it!
We saw more elephants! Hehehe! Look at how wrinkly this one is!
This is a helmeted guinea fowl! Yes, it's similar to the guinea fowl, except that it looks like it has a helmet! Love the blue in this bird!
Isn't the horns of this impala just amazing? He looks magnificent!
And here is the buck's harem!
Another gorgeous end, for a gorgeous day!
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