Common Ostrich
In the distance, through the heat-haze, from a moving vehicle, wearing dirty glasses, the first thing I think is that those large dark lumbering shapes mean there are Elephants on the horizon. How wrong I am. They are Common Ostriches.
It’s hard to express just how massive they are.
Look at this male:
I think this might be a female.
The male’s legs are a gorgeous pink. I think I may have eaten an Ostrich steak before.
Their gobble-gobble-gobble method of eating vegetation is amusing and serves to highlight just how tiny their heads, and therefore their brains must be.
And taking a closer look, most of that tiny head is mouth and eyes.
What a stunning experience.
More on safari in Kenya
Can you kneel on your wrists? Common Warthogs are fabulous creatures. Just look at that hairy face! I love this one's blonde moustache and perky tail.… read more
Is this Hornbill small or is that caterpillar huge? There's an African Grey Hornbill flying past our 4x4 in the Masai Mara. It's come from behind and is flying… read more
Pied Kingfisher This is my first view of a Pied Kingfisher. They are massive compared with the Common Kingfishers we see in… read more
A White-Headed Saw-Wing There's an all-black Swallow-type bird next to our route, as we drive along the dusty compressed-earth tracks of the Masai… read more
Elephant and Egret This is a Cattle Egret Someone needs to tell it that. Because this is an Elephant. read more
Go on, bat those eyelashes at me I love how playful and how brown and fluffy the young Zebras are here in the Masai Mara. They're still… read more
Black-Shouldered Kite There's a Black-Shouldered Kite, Elanus caeruleus, at the top of the bush. It's very far away, but we are gradually… read more
What Johnson said is true. “They are small and the grass is long and the Masai Mara is big” There are two books which started my interest in the natural world. The first was A Treasury of Natural History… read more
On safari in the Masai Mara The twelve of us who have been volunteering in Kenya for Kenya Connect for the past eight days have been… read more
African Wattled Plover No sweat. That's the problem with being a bird. Humans have sweat gland which act to produce water which cools… read more
A gorgeous Three-Banded Plover and a Lilac-Breasted Roller We're in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I think it's an indestructible Toyota Land Cruiser. Gladys is our local Kenyan guide for… read more
Hooded Vultures assemble There's a corpse in the long grass. We think it's the remains of a Buffalo. That means Hooded Vultures, Necrosyrtes… read more