Photo graphas of anamil and birds

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The main avian activity witnessed though was nest building. First up is a pair of Secretary birds standing on top of their partially completed nest which in turn rests atop an acacia tree.

The birds would leave the nest at regular intervals to collect twigs and branches from the ground.

For me though, the world’s most extraordinary nest builder has to be the Weaver bird. In East Africa there are forty different types of Weavers but in the Mara, the most commonly encountered is the male Black-Headed Weaver with its distinctive yellow body, black head and red eyes.

You don’t need to be much of a “twitcher” to marvel at the nest building skills of the Weaver. We watched one start from scratch and within a few hours he had almost finished the intricate structure.  The birds tend to favour the hanging branches of Palm or Acacia trees as their anchor point, and these branches often overhang water, mainly because the banks of the water source usually contain the reeds that constitute the nesting material.
The birds fully live up to their name and their nest building technique involves the intricate weaving of these reeds. In the following image, the bird’s nest is at an early stage of completion. You can clearly see the elaborate weaving and knot tying that has been employed to secure the initial reeds onto the downward hanging palm.

Once a reed has been secured to the nest, the Weaver will dart off to procure another reed before quickly returning.


Photographing Weavers is challenging to say the least. Even at the nest, they are never still. Their heads are in constant motion and they twist and turn their bodies incessantly. It is physically impossible to follow them in flight with a long lens such is the acute speed at which they fly. The only feasible technique is to pre-focus on an object (eg the nest), switch the focusing mode to manual, lock-up the camera’s position, fight for as much shutter speed as possible by setting a high ISO (we’re talking at least 1/1,600^th of second), utilize a cable release and concentrate intently on the nest, hoping the bird flies roughly parallel to the plane of the camera. At any indication of movement, press the release. You will end up with lots of pictures showing just the nest and possibly bits of cut-off Weaver. But occasionally, you will get it right as the previous two images show.
When the nest is almost complete, the Weaver will often hang from the bottom of the nest seemingly to test its strength.


Another favorite avian species of mine is the Oxpecker. Oxpeckers share a symbiotic relationship with various grazing mammals especially Buffalo and Giraffes. The Oxpeckers are tolerated by their hosts due to their ability to remove ticks and other parasites from them.

Occasionally they can also been seen opportunistically attempting to catch the numerous attendant flies that swarm around the grazers.



The next picture shows a herd heading into the woodlands after a day in the swamps. A three stop graduated neutral density filter was used to balance the brighter sky area with the darker foreground. Note the size of the tusks on the elephant second from left.

The rest of park was not a total loss and there is some decent bird life including this Red-Knobbed Coot, taken while lying down on the edge of a small lake.

We also had an unusual encounter with a Spitting Cobra which we initially spotted in the grass in close proximity to an Egyptian Goose. At first it looked as if the Cobra would actually go for the Goose. But when the latter eventually spotted the snake it very bravely started to chase it. The Cobra briefly rose up and spread its hood but then quickly turned tail pursued by the squawking Goose. We got a real sense of how quickly a Cobra can move when it wants to and before we had reacted, it was almost up to our vehicle. For a fleeting moment it appeared that the snake might actually try to enter our vehicle. This was probably the quickest I’d ever seen Simon react as he gunned the engine leaving the snake sucking on a cloud of dust and burning rubber.

Sometimes when the game is scarce and photo opportunities scant, one has to be a little more creative and look beyond the obvious. While driving along the edge of one of the park’s lakes, I noticed a clump of reeds and their reflections in what was extremely flat light. I recognized the potential for a minimalist style image which I think turned out reasonably well.