This crested crane had about five chicks, but they were all scattered about in the grass. At least you can see one, blurred out in the background. It was raining pretty hard, but it also happened to be a great day for shooting. The location was Laikipia, Kenya.

Striped hyenas are much more rare than spotted hyenas and we were lucky to see this one in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. Not only are they endangered, they are also almost strictly nocturnal and rarely seen in the daylight. This was at the end of the day and shot in very low light as two of them were ducking in and out of their den, getting ready for a night of foraging. Our guide said that he had only seen striped hyena a few other times in the reserve.

This is a banded mongoose, photographed in the Masai Mara of Kenya. Unlike other mongoose species that live solitary lives, the banded mongoose lives in colonies. This particular mongoose and the rest of its colony lived in a network of burrows that was right next to a bat eared fox den. The banded mongoose will also live in close proximity to baboons and warthogs — foraging and actually being handled by the former, and picking ticks from the latter.

Servals are nocturnal and hunt mostly at night. We were lucky to catch this one in the late afternoon as it was heading out for the night. I previously posted another shot of this serval — more of a portrait. It gave us several different shot opportunities as it slowly got up from its hiding place in the grass when it realized we were onto him/her.  It then took a few slow steps, then a few quicker ones, before leaping away. I captured a bit more motion blur than ideal in this photo, but there wasn’t much light and my shutter was pretty slow. Even so, I ended up liking the effect.

When giraffes fight, they use their long necks to try and punish their opponents. The behavior is called necking and we only saw it once when we were in Kenya. These two males were really going at it, slapping each other with their heads, both landing blows here and there, but neither really delivering a knock out punch. Eventually they grew tired of whatever it was that they were fighting about and they resumed foraging.

Here’s another of the many silhouette shots from Kenya. This time a male impala in the Olare Orok Conservancy.

This will be my last post for about ten days, as I’m off to India tomorrow in search of tigers. In the meantime, here’s another dik dik — as I mentioned in a previous post, one of the smallest antelope species in all of Africa. This one was walking through our camp one afternoon when we were walking back from lunch. Enjoy, and stay tuned for new shots from India.

This bat-eared fox had particularly large ears. I mean, they all have large ears, but this guy really went above and beyond. They are quite skittish and it was difficult to make a close approach, especially since they hear you coming before you can even see them. This guy, however, held out just long enough so that I could get a few portraits. The ears are full of blood vessels and are also instrumental in keeping the fox cool

Spotted hyenas don’t get much respect from the locals in Kenya. It seemed everyone we met talked about how ugly they are — but most of those people did concede that the babies are kind of cute. I’m a bit amazed at how much they can look like underfed grizzly bears. These two weren’t exactly fresh from the womb (especially the one on the right), but I thought they were quite attractive indeed.

Earlier on this particular day we had spotted an impala carcass hanging from a tree — a sure sign that a leopard was in the area. We couldn’t locate the leopard but knew that eventually she would come back to claim her meal. We returned a couple of hours later and there she was, enjoying a little lunch up in the tree. We checked back in one more time at the end of the day and saw her again. She was still on the kill, but eventually got up and walked down the tree, allowing me to take this silhouette shot.