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I always feel like I have to apologize when I employ the word "epic" because it's so overused. But I'm just going to use it with abandon here. Welcome back to the epic landscape of Amboseli. 

One of my favorite things about Amboseli turned out to be something completely unexpected: the dust devils. They are not animals, but they behaved just as organically and capriciously as any living thing. I found them fascinating. But difficult to photograph. Here are a couple meager attempts. (Notice in the second pic Kilimanjaro just poking up between the two layers of clouds.) 

Dust turned out to be a constant, wholly infiltrating, and not entirely welcome, companion. We were frosted with it each day at the end of safari! However, it did give us the delightful devils and made for some nice pictures of animals kicking up the dust. So I can't really begrudge its presence. 

Wildebeests battling in the dusty foreground, elephants casually walking by in the background. 

Similar to warthogs, wildebeests often get a bad rap for being "ugly." I can't truthfully say I find them pretty, but, like warthogs, I find a certain charm in them ... their long faces and beards. These are blue wildebeests. There is another species, the black wildebeest, whose horns are placed differently on the head, but I have never seen these. 

It happened to be wildebeest baby season in Amboseli! And baby wildebeests are just plain cute ... rompering around, finding their legs. We saw one so young, we could still see the remnants of its umbilical cord hanging from its navel. 

On our last day in Amboseli, as a harbinger of sights to come later in the trip, we saw our first baby lions. Not particularly young 'uns, but cubbies nonetheless. Hanging by the side of the road as if they wanted our attention. 

Well, are you ready for more elephants? Amboseli's signature animal? "Wonder Twin powers, activate!"

One of the most magnificent experiences in Amboseli, or indeed in the whole of our East Africa trip, was watching herds of elephants crest the ridge in front of the mighty Kilimanjaro. Just dots in the distance, quickly resolving into individual elephants, and before you know it, they are right there, "Hey Buster!" at the window. Truly remarkable. 

One of my favorite components of the photo above is the elephant's little avian sidekick off to the left. Egrets are never intimidated by the giant creatures around them, rather they make the most of the view and transportation that such creatures can provide them. Like this little egret below. I want to caption the photo, "elephant jockey." 

And then the elephants have passed, leaving me feeling so awed and blessed by their proximity. 

Again each evening, the elephants approach, pass, and depart. Every evening it feels so special even though it plays out this way over and over, nothing but routine and habit on the part of the elephants, indifferent to whether or not humans witness them. We are just lucky to be a mote in their world for a short period of time. 

"And now for something completely different." ... a lizard. :-) Brightly colored critter on the rocks. Look at his 5-fingered front foot ... kind of cool. 

And now for some more birds. Our guide mentioned several times how Africa will turn anyone into a birder. I certainly never paid much attention to birds until I started traveling in Africa. This little guy is special to me, the pied kingfisher. I first saw him in Uganda, and then again when I purchased my first real zoom lens, my Tamron 150-600 -- the first photo I took with it in Africa, in Maun, Botswana, was of a pied kingfisher sitting in a bush beside the river meandering behind my hostel tent, the day before I left for safari in the Kalahari.  

Another little fella -- a winding cisticola. 

A black crake. Our guide, Elly, could listen to the bush and feel among friends. He told us that in his youth he placed third in a bird-call identification competition. This is a skill I envy, which of course requires a databank of knowledge and experience that I don't have. So I just had to be impressed with his knowledge.

The intense tawny eagle. Like any eagle, it's an admirable predator. 

Lappet-faced vultures have super powerful beaks and are often the last ones to be hanging about a carcass because they can tear off the most difficult bits of skin and tendons. After my tortoise shell experience in Panama, I have a new appreciation for this skill! Too bad I didn't have a lappet-faced vulture beak handy that day, haha. It's not just the big and beautiful animals such as elephants and lions who are endangered by the hand of man, but vultures, who are an extremely important component of the African ecosystem, are also threatened. When poachers use poison, any carcass left behind (such as a de-tusked elephant or a non-target animal who ate the poison, or a lion who was poisoned by farmers/ranchers), the scavengers of it get poisoned as well. Also vulture body parts are often sold in traditional African medicine markets. I guess they are believed to have "magical" properties (I don't know what). Erik and I went into one of these stores in Johannesburg, but I don't remember if they sold real animal parts or not. 

Another bird I really love in Africa is the saddle-billed stork, the tallest stork in the world. Here's something interesting I just learned about them: they don't possess the body part that most birds use to make vocalizations. Basically, they have no vocal chords or voice box. They can only make a clacking sound with their bills. Chicks, apparently, can make a hissing sound when they want food or something, but they loose that ability as adults. So I don't know what they do for mating season, as usually birds are making complicated mating calls and songs. Maybe particularly elaborate bill clacks? Google that one for me and let me know. They are also a little special to me because of when Erik and I spotted our first one in Kruger. The park was asking visitors to register any sightings, with GPS readings if you had them. So we felt a sense of excitement when we spotted one and dutifully took down the GPS coordinates. I just happened to have a GPS because I had been doing an herbivore census in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi.

A beautiful and sizeable heron.

And ostriches! I love these guys, even though they're scary to get close to. Like how baboons are. Those beaks and those feet, and ostriches don't have the sweetest disposition toward humans. But they're so fascinatingly prehistoric-looking. I love seeing them run across the plains. And I always think of the classic Fantasia number where the ostriches are doing ballet in toe shoes. Now THAT I would love to spy some day ... like, drive around some big bushes and find a bunch of them putting on a ballet. Other animals sitting around as the audience, haha.

 How happy am I on safari??

Elly ... our super fun guide. He convinced my mom to crack a hard-boiled egg open on his forehead. Silly times. We're eating a box breakfast on a hilltop overlook in the Amboseli park. 

Kilimanjaro in the background between us.

We leave Amboseli with a wildebeest at sunset. 

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