Ben Wilhelmi

aerial shots

 

being lazy today, just fishing out old pictures. Some have been cropped.

 

flying low over the Serengeti, Nikon D200 equipped with a 35mm f:2.0.

I was trying out this new lens with autofocus so I could fly lower and

not bother with the focusing. Thomson gazelles here, slightly scared.

 

 

 

Cape elands (élands du Cap), a big gazelle.

 

 

considering I have to fly the aircraft, which is not the slowest, but with

a crappy window, I can't complain with the results. I miss a good

old Piper Cub for that exercise.  It's a very slow aircraft with huge

windows that can be opened for the pilot's pleasure! Thanks, Mr Piper.

 

here I pushed my luck a bit, flying lower but then the plane is

definitely too fast. Picture not cropped. One can guess I was low,

shooting with a 35mm....that was just after take-off.

 

a microlight ( un ULM) would be a great toy too by the way

       

Tarangire NP, VII

 

 

yes this beach scenery is indeed in the park, inland Tanzania.

Same further inland in Katavi NP...

 

a waterbuck (un cobe)

 

 

 

 

sometimes they do funny things with their trunk,

twisting them around the tusks...

 

little red tongue suckling. Easier without tusks I'd say.

 

relax and crossing legs. Like in a pub?

 

 

 

 

  

walking in the water seems so much funnier....

Tarangire NP, VI

 

elephants....not much need to write sometimes...

I didn't photoshop the blue color on the water. As it was...

 

 

 

 

 

with a waterbuck in the background.

 

I don't know why they choose to walk in line and nearly hold each other's butt...

 

towards the end of the dry season, the animals are lucky to benefit from

such a lot of water.

 

 

slower baby, mom closing the rank.

Tarangire NP, V

 

 

 

elephant, waterbucks and impalas

 

waterbucks and impalas, they seem to get along well.

 

elephants gathering for some shade under an acacia.

 

splashing in the mud.

 

      

a row of butts.

 

this one looks a bit drunk.

 

 

the dark wet mud looks like metal.

Tarangire NP, IV

just a moody comment: in the movie "the Recruit" with Pacino and Farell,

one of the qualities to be selected in the CIA is the ability to work really hard

nevertheless in return one gets no thank you and no consideration.

I jumped out of the couch to yell out that I had just done that for

the last 15 months with Air Excel! And I'm sure that I developed other qualities

as well that might be useful for the CIA!! The hero learnt the hard way not to trust

his boss and that rang a big bell too...But  unfortunately I'm sure

many of you guys reading this will feel the same in other fields...

 

anyway, back in Tarangire NP...

 

zebras and wildebeests looking for shade under a baobab. No leaves

the shade is pretty thin....

  

 

Tarangire river, lone elephant and a few waterbucks (des cobes)

 

 

lone wildebeest (gnou)in the Tarangire valley.

 

 

ugly marabou stork (un marabout)

 

 

a magpie shrike (corvinelle noir et blanc). As you've noticed, it has become

an exciting exercise to get pictures of airborne birds. Quite challenging but fun.

This picture is the only I have of this bird with its long tail in a fluffy position.

 

 

the same just about to take off, still holding the branch.

 

 

another one coming to land.

 

 

male ostrich. Easy to recognize, it sports black feathers.

The red color on its neck indicates he is horny.

 

 

and lucky him, he is not alone. Here is a female, light brown feathers.

 

as said earlier, some similarity with the Serengeti.

 

wildebeests, baobabs, the Ngorongoro range in the distance...

quite a cliché, I know...but the feeling is still great to do your

own clichés yourself!

 

Tarangire, go-away-bird

 

white-bellied go-away-bird (touraco à ventre blanc)... go-away because

the saying goes that when danger approaches the bird warns other

animals with a sound that could remind of 'go-away'. Probably on a BBC

documentary when I was child I saw a proof of this. There was a little

film with a hunter, minimally dressed and equipped, probably a Bushman.

The savannah, the insect noises, the yellow dry grass, an intense blue sky,

the heat distorting the horizon...Imagine that scene on a little kid. No

voice off, even the hunter stayed mute. He was trying to approach stealthily

and kill a gazelle with a bow and an arrow. Every time the go-away-bird

frenetically warned the gazelle. After a few times, the hunter got annoyed

and gave a dirty look at the bird. One more failed attempt and the last

sequence is the hunter cooking that same bird on a piece of branch over

a little fire!I was really little and I was laughing so hard that I still remember

vividly the story and the pictures. Maybe one of the sources for my

dreams of going to Africa one day.

 

 

difficult pictures through the thick foliage...

 

 

swallowing those berries only when yellow and ripe.

 

  

 

on take off....

 

I was too busy trying to follow the bird in the view finder that I

hadn't noticed the giraffe immediately. The bird is on the upper

right side of the picture. Also visible are the fruit hanging from

the well-named sausage tree. Elephant or hippo food. This

comment prompted once a client to ask the bewildered

guide: "Oh my God, how do they jump up there??". We stood

silent, speechless...

 

it nearly looks he is going to strafe the giraffe.

 

 

  

short of landing on a branch, very far, picture was enlarged again.

Tarangire nat'l park, III

 

 

birds...I really like them but they're not always cooperative.

These little bastards here for instance are yellow-collared lovebirds

(inséparables masqués). Cute little birds but...

don't think I got that close for this picture. I had to enlarge and crop quite

a lot (that's why the quality goes down) from a picture similar to the one below.

  

   

maybe there are other places where they've been habituated in a lodge but

here that was about the closest we came, shot here with a 400mm.

 

 

a Kirk's dikdik (dikdik de Kirk). Notice the bright glands below the eye.

Not always that blue but they spread their mark all over the twigs.

 

 

lilac-breasted roller (rollier a poitrine lila), easier to approach.

This beauty is even more beautiful in flight.

 

suckling baby, a little more than one year old. As a rule of thumb, the baby

is less than one year if he can walk below the mother's belly.

 

weather was pretty dull. But imagine this landscape under a sunny day....

this is the end of the dry season. Animals are lucky to find water at this stage.

 

a waterbuck (un cob defassa)

Tarangire nat'l park, II

 

I was complaining about the bird names the other day, the translation

and the difficulty to identify them, even with a decent bird book

what about these 2 below...different guys but I think there are both

rosy-patched bush-shrikes (tchagra  à croupion rose). Squack

mentioned some subspecies which are not always shown...

 

 

 

 

 

this elephant and the other one (yesterday picture)

came close to the jeep, one within one meter from the

backdoor but too briefly...

 

      I tried to climb on the roof and see if I could get an original

near-vertical shot ....too late.

 

 

 

 

  blood vessels very visible here. The elephants flap their ears to cool

down their system. And the way they're damaged over the years

by the thorns allows scientists to identify them with accuracy.

 

 

magpie shrike (corvinelle noir et blanc, un genre de pie-grièche), quite a long tail.

 

 

  eastern chanting-goshawk, (autour à ailes grises, pas vautour)

Tarangire nat'l park

 

this park is elephant country. Weather was not too great that weekend. But...

 

'better a bad day in the bush than a good day in the office'...

 

 

breast-feeding

 

 

getting food from mom.

 

 

enlarged for details on the little tusks. They must be a nuisance for suckling milK...

 

 

all elephants sport long eyelashes

 

twin cracks

 

 

I had to jump back quickly in the car after a nature call. They came really close

to the jeep.

from Longido to Tarangire nat'l park, and a thought for Lorne White.

  I tend to avoid personal subjects on my blog. But today is special.

I feel a bit down because this is the 3rd anniversary of a friend's death. Lorne

White crashed in the Mahale mountains with 4 people on board.

Unfortunately to this day, nobody knows for sure what happened. I miss him as

all his friends do too, and of course his family. If you read this my thoughts are with you.

Some of his friends are still here in Arusha. We'll have a drink this weekend all together.

 

Lorne had the chance to see a lot of African wonders

during his flights and safaris back then. Katavi, Mahale, Selous....he saw them all too.

 

One of the first views inside Tarangire, little similarity with Serengeti,

though the Ngorongoro range divides the 2 areas.

 

 

the huge famous baobab tree

 

wildebeests (gnous) but these don't participate in the famous migration

between Kenya and Tanzania though the Mara river.

 

 

Kirk's dikdik (dikdik de Kirk), about 5 kg, really small gazelle.

 

 

much bigger is the impala, a male here.

 

 

and his harem. No horn, that's easy.

 

 

 

 

a young zebra, more curious than the adult next.

 

a lilac-breasted roller (un rollier à poitrine lila, voire rollier

à longs brins). A beauty...a serious flaw with the birding activity is the

different names allocated to birds. First they change names

because his group has been reclassified. Fair enough. Except

that not all scientists agree so from one book to the other, you've got

differences. Then the translations are worth a mention. I don't

know if the long historical feud between French and Brits still carries

on in the birder's world but I wonder once in a while... in English

one 'forked-tail' specimen suddenly becomes a 'Mozambican' dude

in French, 'green' becomes 'teasing, 'common' or 'long-tailed'

get 'African'', 'egret' and 'heron' are happily mixed too. And also

what is a stork in English is not always just a 'cigogne' in

French, or 'eagle' for 'aigle' the same.... I could give many other

examples ...Quite challenging for a non-English native...

 

 

a white-headed buffalo-weaver (un alecto à tête blanche)

 

  

a white-bellied go-away-bird (un touraco à ventre blanc). See,

'touraco' in French. And 'turaco' exists in English but for other birds,

that are together with this one in French... and don't get me wrong,

I don't take side since I'm a rookie in the field. Just wondering...

 

  

  a bateleur, see this one doesn't deserves an adjective in English but it does

in French, un 'bateleur des savanes'. Just an eagle by the way...I love it since I saw

it one day performing a perfect roll above another bird! Little fighter pilot...

 

good old zebras.

camping between Longido...part II

 

probably one of the smallest baby giraffe I've ever seen. By the way,

I've never seen a birth in the wild after so many safaris! sad...

 

fluffy 'horns' on the head. It's bone structure, not horn.

 

Tiny bit of blue tongue. My grandma hates giraffes. Well so to say...but she still

vividly remembers a visit at the zoo when she was little. It must have been a real

big feat in those days. Another big feat was the paper bag with small biscuits

she had received for the visit.Here she stands in front of the giraffe, and all of a

sudden the beast plunged her head down, stuck her blue tongue in the bag and

pulled out with all the biscuits stuck to it!

Grandma never forgave the giraffe family, heehee.

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, not a great picture, just plain zebras, but they were watching us pitching camp!

Curious but wary.

  

camping between Longido and Kitumbeine, northern Tanzania

 

title sounds great but it is only 100 km from Arusha, which is why I like Arusha, for its proximity with great locations. For the rest...., but that's another story.

 

red_billed oxpeckers (piqueboeuf à bec rouge). Always seen on hippos, giraffes...

on a donkey here and cleaning their host's wounds.

 

a rare lesser kudu (petit koudou). My 3rd spotting in 9 years and many safaris! Quite shy unfortunately.

 

 

enlarged picture of a pygmy falcon. Cute thing.

 

 

a Lanner falcon. Many falcons seem to sport those black tears below the eyes.

 

 

 

a Kori bustard (une outarde Kori), the largest flying bird in Africa, up to 128 cm high.

 

 

camping spot in the savannah, off the track.

 

 

another rarity, the gerenuk (une gazelle de Waller). Quite shy too though they

behaved quite well this time, at least this male. Able to stand on its hind legs and feed higher

in acacias. Named "giraffe-gazelle" in swahili for this latter feat and long neck.

prized by hunters...Ok no ranting today.

I've only spotted them in this area, never in the regular parks in Tanzania.

Its range seems to start in the north of the country then going into Kenya.

seriously enlarged for details. Cute too. The thin muzzle allows feeding between the thorns.

 

we tried to come too close and she was gone.

  

 

back to life...

so I resigned last week...I thought I'd have a lot of free time, which is the case, but at the same time, I find myself completely behind in many topics. Maybe because I wanted to do too much at the same time. 

I finally managed to see some friends, some I hadn't seen in 15 months! Had a few lunches with others, including an ex-colleague, who left as well, only the 4th pilot to leave the company for various reasons this year(!) and other employees are following suit....

The biggest immediate urgent treat was to go on safari for 4 days last long weekend. Finally a weekend together with Karine! in 15 months, besides the annual leave, I've had only 3 weekends off! Karine has been quite patient too!

because of the end of Ramadan and the mufti changing the dates, the banks closed a day earlier and we couldn't buy the nat'l park cards. A new system has been implemented to fight theft and corruption amongst the park authorities. So some changes of our plans were required....

nice feeling to get the Land Rover serviced and packed, to use the camp gear and the roof tent...albeit we discovered, after we had set camp, that an army of ants had invaded the tent, on top of a mould smell. Maybe I should check that tent more often, specially after a rainy season, dumb me. Karine was not keen on sleeping under the starry night, so we clean and swept the tent. Night was fine nevertheless but for a few occasional itches. We had chosen a spot in the bush between Kitumbeine and Longido, NW of Arusha, just a few Masai people live out there. Quite a remote place, a real bit of savannah. Out of any park but animals still roam the area. The only flaw are seasonal hunters (hardly the locals) who think the place belongs to them because they paid some bribes or fees to whoever. Not rare to hear travellers being somewhat harassed by hunters while on such a trip. It happened to me once and all the parties held ground, just time wasted. But it happened to some friends of mine with 3 kids on one of their first camp in Africa. Understandably, they left the place quickly because of these bastards. But this time was asshole-free again.

3rd camp for Karine who enjoyed every bit of it and even heard a hyena at night. We heard a lion growling at length during breakfast ( Karine was a bit concerned but she stayed cool), we saw elephant dung all over, were assisted by an audience of zebras while setting camp, were lucky enough to be left alone though some kids saw us, had only one puncture. Like a kid I always like to camp, gather dead wood, light my own campfire, cook sausages from a piece of branch....

nevertheless there are only a handful of tribesmen living there, thanks to a serious chronic shortage of rains only the toughest stay, and thanks to hunting the amount of animals is less than in a parks. But this is free of charge and quite alone. Priceless feeling. Once again, and that's the only place where it has happened, we saw a bunch of gerenuks (gazelle de Waller). A type of gazelles, pretty shy because of hunting. Quite cute, very slender specially when they stand on their hind legs to feed on high branches. A rare feat amongst gazelles. Translated from swahili, "swala twiga", is gazelle giraffe from its long neck and feeding on high branches.

we also spotted a lesser kudu ( un petit koudou), the same male twice I think. That's my 3rd kudu spotting in 100's of safaris! Quite chuffed by that of course.

I could also remove the dust from my binoculars and spot many birds, and a lot of "new" ones to add to my bird list. Hey Squack, I might need your expertise again on this as there are some difficult cases...

ostriches, giraffes incl a cute young, zebras, dikdiks, impalas, squirrels...made our trip really pleasant. Karine thought of some modifications to adjust on my faithful gear....sigh. I admit am the kind of guy to throw all the gear in one or 2 boxes and go....

after that we left and finally went to Tarangire nat'l park, via a bank for the cards, for 2 nights but that is for another post.

free, funny feeling...

 

enjoying every moment of my new life, feeling sorry for my ex-colleagues who'll have to share my job, which means even heavier load of work. One of the trainees left yesterday...I saw a few friends already that I hadn't time to pay a visit to in about a year! what a shame.

 

Tomorrow the Land Rover will bring Karine and I for 4 days in the bush, in Tarangire nat'l park alongside the Rift Valley, not very far from Arusha but in 4 days that will be perfect. Some writer-traveller, I forgot who, said " I often hear people talking about how many miles they've done in one day, not what they've seen!". So true. The car has just been serviced and I still have to kind of check it on an easy trip before going in remote place like lake Natron and volcano Lengai. And we'll camp somewhere in Tarangire , hopefully far from other travellers, sleeping in the roof tent, having a camp fire. First time in 15 months using that roof tent! What a shame again.

 

and next week, I've got at least 6 different people to meet for dinner or a drink. Easy planning now...

 

anyway, some pictures below at random.

 

Empakai Crater, Rift Valley, near volcano Lengai. The emerald lake at the bottom

is often invaded by flamingoes. I'll definitely miss flying down there...

 

some ugly caterpillar, with 4 eyes?

 

 

Air Zimbabwe! How they manage to pay their bills is a mystery to me but this old Boeing is

seen quite often in Dar es Salaam

 

 

sunset on lake Tanganyika, western Tanzania

 

just watching details of a fire...

 

room with a view on lake Tanganyika.

 

 

Kigoma airport, not much activity but for the Un operations to the Congo next door.

In those hills in the background lays the Gombe Stream nat'l park where Jane Goodall

became famous with her chimpanzee work.

 

operating under a United Nations contract, one C130 Hercules with a dead engine.

this worker doesn't even look at the airplanes anymore....

 

Seronera airstrip in central Serengeti. Busy with aircraft, teeming with wildlife.