Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

The Serengeti is without doubt the world’s most famous wildlife reserve.  The name Serengeti actually derives from the Masai world meaning endless plain.  The wide open landscape (12,950 square kilometres of it, in fact) stretches on and on as far as the eye can see – to Ngorongoro in the south east, Ikorongo and Grumeti in the west, and Kenya’s Masai Mara in the north.
 

This is Tanzania’s oldest national park, officially gazetted in 1951.  The range of wildlife which can be spotted here is simply staggering.  Aside from the Big Five, Thompson’s and Grant’s gazelle, topi, eland, impala, waterbuck, hyena, wild dog, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra, cheetah and buffalo can all be spotted here.  Birdlife is also abundant, with ostrich, bustard, Egyptian crane, marabou stork, various eagle, secretary bird and around 500 more species of bird are all resident within the national park.


It is here that the daily drama and spectacle of natural life in Africa plays out – from birth to those final moments, of a wildebeest as he struggles in vain to escape the unfailing grip of a lioness’s razor-sharp claws, or a mighty elephant as he lays down to rest and peacefully closes his eyes for the last time.
 

Perhaps the greatest wildlife spectacle of all, however, is the “Great Migration”.  Each year, moved by some overwhelming,  imperceptible force, millions of ungainly wildebeest and zebra begin their long and perilous journey through the Serengeti, entering the Masai Mara to the north and returning to Tanzania around November.  The journey will see a mating frenzy, resulting a few months later in an explosion of the wildebeest population, as some 8000 calves are born each day during birthing season.  Of course, many deaths will also occur, whether by old age, drowning during one of the treacherous river crossings, or predation by a hungry lion or lurking crocodile.

Photos of Serengeti National Park