Our African Safari - Day Seven (Baby giraffes, lions, vultures, hyenas and more)

Day 7 of our safari started out with one of the "Ahhhh - how cute!" moments, as we came across this very young giraffe and it's mother. We were all amazed at how small the baby was.

Our guides told us that this baby had just recently been born. If you look closely, you can even see the umbilical cord hanging down from the baby giraffe.

I was photographing the interaction between the baby and it's mother, when mom leaned down and the two connected for an amazing moment. This is another one of my favorite photo moments from our trip.

Here is a tighter shot of the baby giraffe, where you can clearly see the umbilical cord.

This photo shows the big size difference between the adult and baby giraffes.

Here are two young giraffes criss-crossing each other.

And then I was back to photographing the baby once again. I just could not resist this little guy.

I used the reach of the Canon 200-400mm lens (with built-in tele converter, giving me 560mm) to zoom in on the face of the baby.

A short while later, we came across another pride of lions, who were just hanging out in the shade of a nearby tree.

Since we had seen so many lions lounging around, we decided to move on. We drove along for a little while before coming across a group of vultures who were chowing on a carcass.



These are very large birds, with incredible wing spans.

They are also pretty aggressive with each other, fighting for position to get the best food.

This guy won the battle and had his turn at the food source.

Driving around Ndutu, we came across these two cheetahs. They were not in the best light, but I never pass up a chance to photograph these amazing animals.

It is not just the animals that we are photographing while on safari. I took this photo to show you the terrain in this area of Tanzania. The acacia trees are just as unique and beautiful as the wildlife.

Here is a vulture hanging out on a dead acacia limb.

It was just before noon when we saw another group of lions grabbing some shade under a nearby tree. Since there were four of them there, we decided to stop and watch them for a little bit. And then we saw another female coming towards us.

And then, one by one, more females came out of the bushes to join the group under the tree.

As you can see from this photo, there ended up being 7 females lounging here at that moment.

I saw this one lion peaking out from behind the tree and liked the composition of this shot.

A couple of minutes later and we saw another lion coming up from the nearby water hole.



She laid down and looked right at me. I liked that I had perfectly even light on her face and framed the photo as tight as I could. I was using the Canon 5D Mark IV with the Canon 200-400mm lens at 560mm, set at ISO 320, f/5.6 which gave me 1/400 sec. I was resting the camera on the vehicle, so I did not have to worry about camera shake too much.



We had all three vehicles at this spot, with 8 lions to our right and a large herd of elephants to our left.

Since it was lunch time, we decided that this would be a great place to stop for lunch. How often do you get to have box lunches with lions and elephants in the wild?!

Click on this image to see the video of our lunch with the wildlife!

After lunch, we were on the move once again. This time we were making the drive from Ndutu, into through the Serengeti.

As we made the long drive to the Serengeti, we saw wildlife along the side of the road. We saw this gazelle posing for us, and took the shot. I just love the shapes of their antler.

We also saw this healthy looking jackal. I took this photo to show the animal in the surroundings. Serengeti actually means "Endless plains" and you can see how it got the name.

From our previous trip to the area, I knew that we would come across the area with the colorful lizards.

I had fun taking photos of these guys from different angles.

Unlike the human race, the males actually look better than the females do. :)

At one point, we saw this Cattle Egret hanging out by a water spot.

We saw this family of hyena hanging out by the side of the road.

We even got a rare siting of a baby hyena. That was a first for me!

As the day ended, we were treated to yet another great cloud formation and god rays. Another amazing day in Africa!!!

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