Birding in Tanzania

Tanzania, in Africa, as all know, is home to the scintillating grasslands of Serengeti and the wonderful, virtually unchanged habitat of the Ngorongoro Crater. These are probably one of the most visited wildlife habitats on this planet. People visiting Tanzania are drawn to these places in the hope of enjoying the company of the famed Big-5, constituted by the Lion, the Leopard, the Elephant, the Buffalo and the Rhino. They are no doubt the big game over there and the exhilaration of watching them in action on the safari drives in these parks is something not to be missed for sure.

However, Tanzania is home to a lot of very beautiful and very colourful bird life too. In the melee of the big game drives, it would be good to take a bit of time to enjoy the fabulous bird life it has on offer. More so, in the lesser known, lesser visited parks of Tanzania, like the Lake Tarangire National Park and the Lake Manyara National Park. These boast of a lot of rare and endemic species of mammals and birds.

Very recently, got an opportunity to visit Tanzania, and got to spend a day and a half at these parks. Even at the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro, we brought a bit of birding, to the mix as well 🙂

A lot of these birds, though quite common around Tanzania, were new for a first-time visitor like me. Apart from those seen on the game drives, many of them are seen around the various picnic spots in Serengeti and the other parks, wherein, the visitors take a break to have lunch etc. These seemed quite used to people as well. Given the number of visitors to the place, that wasn’t very surprising to me. This in fact, acted in my favour, as it gave me some good photographic opportunities.

Here are a few….., hope you enjoy them……

This is just a glimpse of the wonderful variety of bird life that Tanzania harbours. Hopefully, will be able to get to see many more in my next outing there, whenever that’s going to be!… 🙂

You can view my entire Africa gallery here,

              –    http://photos.framesofnature.com/Travel/Africa

( A Quick Note: There are more pics than what I would ideally like to put in one gallery 🙂 . However, please do go through them at your leisure and do let me know your thoughts/critics )

Leaving you with a beautiful little leaf mantis that I happened to see at one of the picnic spots in the Lake Tarangire National Park.  A praying mantis, for which, looking like a dry leaf is the camouflage. It has leafy extensions to its legs, body and head and when it sits motionless on a branch or in the crevices on the bark of a tree, the mantis looks very much like a fallen dry leaf.

Leaf mantis