I had planned to grab my cameras and get back on the trail of the Serengeti gnus in January and February. Every spring, during the short rainy season, more than a million gnus migrate to the huge plains in the south of the Serengeti nature reserve where the females give birth to hundreds of thousands of calves in the space of just a few short weeks. Most of the gnus don’t graze in the Serengeti National Park itself, but prefer the Ngorongoro Conservation Area between the Ngorongoro crater and the park border. With the exception of a few strips of woodland near river banks and lakes, this is a huge area of almost vegetation-free dry savannah that is only green for a very short period during the rainy season. During this green phase, the area is covered with highly nutritious grass that the gnu mothers eat to help them produce milk for their newborn calves. Such an enormous amount of potential prey naturally attracts hyenas, cheetahs and lions, and makes the area a major draw for wildlife photographers. One of the main migratory paths is near the Ndutu Lodge, where you can follow the herds for miles off-road on their way south and east. My attempts to photograph this spectacle in the spring of 2006 didn’t pan out, and the ten days I had set aside were simply not long enough. Back then, a long drought meant that only a few gnus had reached the area by the time I got there, and the rest of the herds arrived weeks later than usual.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania is one of the few nature reserves in Africa that still allow visitors to drive off-road and is a paradise for wildlife photographers who are resistant to enormous numbers of mosquitoes, horseflies and tsetse flies. The only things that can really spoil the fun are the mud that follows the rain and the odd broken axle or suspension spring. The distance that the animals flee to in emergencies are great compared to the short distances they keep when they are at rest, and even ungulates that are not usually timid are especially nervous during the birth period. Flight distances of 100 metres and more are not uncommon, and even the usually indifferent hyenas don’t allow vehicles to within less than 30 metres before they take off for safer ground. Photographically speaking, this is an area that is predestined for the use of the very longest super telephoto lenses.
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