Another thing that I like about rainy season in East Africa is the possibility for rainbows. This photo of a mother and baby zebra was taken on the Laikipia plains late in the day one such afternoon.

This is a martial eagle and it was photographed in the Olare Orok Conservancy of Kenya. Martial eagles are the largest eagles in Africa with a wingspan of up to 8.5 feet. They are powerful predators and have been known to prey upon young impala, warthog and baboons.

It was our last day in Laikipia, Kenya when we saw these lion cubs playing in a tree. There was a third cub as well — and the mother resting in the brush just to the right of these two 3-month olds. There wasn’t a lot of light so early in the morning, but every now and again, the cubs stopped moving for an instant and I was able to capture the moment.

I was hoping for clouds in the sky on our final morning in Lewa, Kenya but none were to be had when we spotted two white rhinoceros in front of Mount Kenya. Even without the clouds, it was a beautiful morning made even better by all the great landscape opportunities (Lewa was the most picturesque of the four areas we visited — although they were all fairly spectacular). We saw quite a few white rhino there, as well as plenty of black rhino, which I’ll post soon.

They call this guy the red headed agama lizard for good reason (there is also a blue headed agama — they call that one by its name for good reason too). The males have this Spider man like appearance while the females are more brownish in color. They are widespread throughout much of Africa. This one was spotted in the Masai Mara.

We saw two types of mongoose on the Kenya trip — banded and dwarf. This one is the dwarf mongoose and he was actually lurking around the edge of our camp. I spotted him while walking to our safari vehicle for our afternoon game drive. Always nice to get a few shots in the bag before you even make it to the car.

The rainy season in east Africa means great skies most every sunrise and sunset. This silhouette of a hartebeest at sunset was taken in the Olare Orok Conservancy, just north of the Masai Mara in Kenya.

Cape buffalo always have this look on their faces like they want to kick your ass. They just stand and stare at you, squint a little as if to say you better not come an inch closer and then resume grazing after you’ve moved off. They are actually quite formidable and have been known to take down a lion or two when the lions try to get their young. We actually saw a herd of about 100 surrounding a tree that they had chased two lions up into. The standoff lasted about two hours before the buffalo moved off and the lions were finally able to come down.

Leopards are very strong and  are capable of dragging their prey up into trees — even large prey like this gazelle. They will do this to keep other carnivores like hyenas and baboons from stealing the kill. At first, we only saw the gazelle up in the tree while the leopard was nowhere to be found. We decided to leave for an hour or two and then circled back later to find her feeding.

We had just left camp early one morning in the Masai Mara when we spotted this black-backed jackal with a little breakfast. That’s a gazelle leg the jackal has in its mouth. And that’s the great thing about being on safari in Africa — you never know what you’re going to get. One day it’s a pride of lions with cubs and the next it’s a jackal with a gazelle drumstick.