Home, sweet, home!

This is my tent at Serena fisi (hyena in swahili) camp. It is very nice and contains a comfy bed, bookshelf and soon a desk and chair.  

So far I have been out on two observation (obs) sessions and have seen a lot of really cool things already! Last night we saw a wildebeest crossing. This is when wildebeest stampede into the mara river. There were a lot of tourists there standing on top of their safari vehicles to see better. This is a really high season in the Maasai Mara and people come from all over the world to see the migration. I am so lucky that my job includes seeing such incredible things. The elephants in this picture got a little trapped by the wildebeest and safari vehicles and seemed a little perturbed. I guess they normally move out for awhile when the migration gets here, they like things a little quieter.

 I also saw a few of the many hyenas that I will soon need to know how to identify. We identify the hyenas based on their age and sex as well as their spot patterns and any damage to their ears. There are about 50 hyenas in each clan and we follow three different clans. This means that I have a lot of learning to do! The hyena below is Rachet a sub-adult male.

This morning at breakfast we had two visitors. During our breakfast of french toast, fresh delicious fruit, avocado and other veggies, two female warthogs stopped by looking like they would like to share. I guess this is the first time they had trotted over to us wanting food. They were very skittish (as they should be, they are wild animals) but got braver and braver with the more food we threw them. We would like some camp pets and I think these warthogs will do quite well. The adult female, shown below, was really into the french toast and only acknowledged and banana and avocado when the french toast was all gone. They have been wandering around camp all afternoon feeding, I hope they stay! 

A warthog a few meters from our table at the lab tent