The Lilac Breasted Roller (to the right) and the Suberb Starling side by side. Two of the prettiest birds in the Maasi Mara.
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Tens of thousands of wildebeest everywhere slowly making their way to “the Crossing” of the Mara River… where the crocs are waiting. As seen previously, the crocs are already pretty full…. But with every passing day as the wildebeest kind of mill around, the crocs are getting hungry again…. The majority of the crossing has already occurred. These are the residual population that is still tens of thousands.
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Huge, but not terribly hungry right now, they have fed hugely on previous wildebeest crossings. They will be hungry for the next lot as they fill their fat reserves for the long lean times ahead.
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Dozens of these guys of all different sizes—including unbelievably large ones, and none that were small….. waiting their time…
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We came upon this pond in the middle of a very dry plain. Surrounded by all kinds of Egrets, Marabou, and others looking for—something!! Then, one of the smaller Marabou found a fairly good sized pond turtle (somehow it had survived this environment long enough to get this large). This began a 25-minute struggle between, ultimately, 3 of the Marabou and the turtle….. we were routing for the little guy…… what happened?
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The Marabou continues to try to force this resistant turtle down his throat…. From every angle….. it wont go down!
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The Marabou continues to try to force this resistant turtle down his throat by beating it on the ground….. it wont stay down!
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The Marabou emerges with the turtle in his mouth…. He swallowed and swallowed and every time the turtle came back up again…. Just too large to go down. Eventually, he threw his head back like he was chugging a shot of booze and down it went…..
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The winner….!!!
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The sun sets on an incredible landscape on an incredible day….
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