Wildlife in Kenya And where to sport them
Lurking with Leopards.
Wildlife in Kenya And where to sport them. It is said by those who know about leopards that you’ll only get to see one if it lets you, and when it does, you may find its gaze strangely disconcerting as it looks straight through you.
The top spots in which they are found include the Maasai mara national reserve, where they tend to keep to the riverine edges waiting for the zebras and wildebeest to come down to drink, and the surrounding mara conservancies.
The prime leopard country is also the Aberdares and Kenya’s biggest park, Tsavo East and West, where if one would want to see them, should keep their gaze up on forks of trees during the day
because they like to use forked trees as game larders. Then one can see the twitching of a tail.
Looking for Lions.
Lion spotting for the amateur is best done under the guidance of a professional safari guide. These are the guys who always know where to find the resident prides and who can produce them like large and particularly fearsome rabbits out of hats.
Maasai Mara is the lead for lion-location in Kenya, where around 1000 lions have been so thoroughly cataloged that they have their own database. So when one has located a lion, all one needs to do is to determine whether or not it has spots on its nose, chunks out of its ears, or a particularly unusual placement of whiskers, and one can get to know its name, number, and life history. Tsavo west national park which lies equidistant between Nairobi and the coast, is home to one-third of all the lions in Kenya -some 700 of the fantastic beasts.
tsavo was also home to Kenya’s most famous man-eating lions, which in the late 19th century devoured at least 35 Indian railway workers, thus playing havoc with the building of the Uganda railway.
Lions from a different perspective, head for lake Nakuru national park where some 50 rare tree-climbing lions loll about in trees like formidably overgrown kittens.
questing for Elephants.
Elephants, despite their size, can be elusive. Amazingly, they can even be mistaken for bushes while in dense undergrowth. Eight tons of elephant can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
one reserve that won’t disappoint you on the elephant front, however, is Amboseli, one of Kenya’s oldest and most-visited.
Home to one of the world’s most famous free-moving elephant populations, Amboseli National Reserve hosts some 1200 elephants. They have been so extensively tracked, recorded, and filmed that they are almost household names. Nor does it take much effort to find them.
One may be able to come across them nine times out of ten in a herd at the Amboseli swamp, their favorite spot.
Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary, an elephant migration route as old as time, keeps their elephants concentrated against a less theatrical backdrop.
This reserve boasts 150 elephants wandering in only 24 km of rugged terrain. The sanctuary also has a shop where you can purchase your own supply of elephant-dung writing paper.
Shimba Hills National Reserve is right next door, so one can drop in to catch its population of 200 elephants as they stroll against gently rolling woodlands, which look as though they’ve been geographically misplaced and should be in Northern Europe.
Browsing for buffalos.
It’s been said that a buffalo resembles a cow on steroids, and it’s not far from the truth.
Though usually docile and cow-like, the Cape buffalo is equipped with a particularly dangerous set of curling horns, which are responsible for killing more people in Africa than virtually any other creature (except the hippopotamus).
widespread throughout Kenya, buffaloes are an accepted part of the scenery in most of the national parks. For a close encounter with a buffalo, however, you should head for Hell’s Gate National Park, close to Lake Naivasha. Here you can run, walk, or ride a bike past the buffalo herds, though you’d be well advised not to get too close.
Roaming for rhinos.
Ruthlessly hunted for its horn, which is widely used in Chinese medicine and much prized as a dagger handle in the Middle East, the black rhino came close to extinction at the close of the last century and remains Africa’s most endangered large mammal.
Kenya has around 600 eastern black rhinos, half of all those remaining on Earth and 90% of those remaining in the wild. It also has around 350 white rhinos. The difference between the two rhinos is not the color because both are determinedly gray. In fact, the derivation of the name ‘white’ originates from the Afrikaans for ‘wide,’ which is ‘weight,’ and refers to the width of the white rhino’s lip, which is especially adapted to grazing.
The black rhino, on the other hand, has a triangular, prehensile lip more adapted to browsing on leaves and shrubs. An easier method of telling them apart, however, is that white rhinos are considerably bigger than black rhinos.
Where to find them?
They are found in Nairobi National Park, which is the quickest way to find them. The the Rhino Ark, 15 minutes from the city center, shelters 50 black rhinos that browse the plains and can even be spotted as your plane comes in to land at Nairobi Airport.
Kenya’s largest population of rhinos lives in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which has over 100 black rhinos that roam a varied biosphere. Additionally, a number of trans-located white rhinos can be viewed at close quarters in their enclosure.
lewa wildlife conservancy is also one of the most famous rhino conservation strongholds, with a combined black rhino population of almost 90 strong. Other remarkable rhino-spotting venues include Lake Nakuru, near the flamingoes across the lake, and Meru national park, where the dedicated rhino sanctuary hosts 25 black and 55 white rhinos.
Solio Ranch is impossible to miss, holding the title for hosting the highest density of rhinos per square kilometer in Africa. Here, one can see concentrations of up to 50 rhinos at a time.
For more information please contact Simba Paka Safaris
