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Tanzania's oldest and most popular national park, the
Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six
million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000
zebra and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle join the wildebeest’s
trek for fresh grazing. Yet even when the migration is
quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating
game-viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller
groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands
of eland, topi, kongoni, impala and Grant’s gazelle.
The spectacle of predator
versus prey dominates Tanzania’s greatest park. Golden-maned
lion prides feast on the abundance of plain grazers.
But there
is more to Serengeti than large mammals. Gaudy agama lizards
and rock hyraxes scuffle around the surfaces of the park’s
isolated granite koppies. A full 100 varieties of dung
beetle have been recorded, as have 500-plus bird species,
ranging from the outsized ostrich and bizarre secretary bird
of the open grassland, to the black eagles that soar
effortlessly above the Lobo Hills. |
