Web-Exclusive
|
photos_africa.html
 |
|
|
Sign up for our newsletter packed with tried-and-true travel tips, exclusive deals, book discounts, and more!
» Click Here
|
|
|
|
 |
Scenes from a Kenya Safari
Text and photographs by George W. Stone
|
|
|
« 3 of 13 »
|
The Samburu National Reserve is part of a large park system that protects roughly ten percent of Kenya's land. The nation maintains 42 national parks and 12 game and marine reserves. Samburu, a peaceful but sun-baked 40-square-mile reserve, was established in the 1970s and supports a great variety of unique wildlife, including Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, Beisa oryx, and the long-necked gerenuk (a graceful antelope that stands on its hind feet to nibble acacia leaves). More common wildlife—but still exotic to me—include elephants, lions, cheetahs, Cape buffalos, Grant's gazelles, dikdiks, and waterbucks. Samburu is a birder's paradise, with more than 350 varieties flitting about, including kingfishers, hummingbirds, storks, eagles, and vultures. Although ground-loving guinea fowls and Somali ostriches don't exactly "flit," they're present in abundance. Sluggish but ominous crocodiles patrol the muddy banks of the Ewaso Ng'iro as fat hippos grunt nearby.
"Nature defies itself" gently in Samburu. In 2002 a lioness nicknamed Kamuniak—"Blessed One" in the Maa language of the Samburu—adopted a baby oryx (an antelope typically preyed upon by lions) and protected it from other predators for 17 days before it was eaten by a passing lion. A month later, Kamuniak adopted a second oryx calf, which was later taken by park rangers to an animal orphanage so that it could be properly nourished. Wildlife biologists remain baffled by Kamuniak's un-lionlike behavior, which defies all precedent. The animators at Disney, however, were likely thrilled by this new source material.
|
