From Ol Pejeta to Tsavo West (Kenya) (page 8 of 15)

Hi Anne-Marie,

For the shrike, it's undoubtedly a Long-tailed Fiscal, Long-tailed Fiscal, Lanius cabanisi. BL

totally agree :)

So you were completely wrong😎

Hey Bernard,

Great additions, but we feel for you... I admire how you managed at times not to strangle John and still take your (beautiful) photos without shaking with rage... T.I.A., right?

Oh, I can confirm—I wasn’t lacking the urge😠! I imagined the worst torments for him in that bush so dense sometimes no one would’ve found him... But hey, we’re not savages after all😎.

For the shrike, it’s undoubtedly a Long-tailed Fiscal, *Lanius cabanisi*.

I agree, but I had my doubts. My Stevenson guide had listed the bird. The issue is that in the book’s image (a solid 1kg to handle awkwardly), the bird is shown with a partially gray back, whereas in the image here, the back is black. So, long-tailed Fiscal it is—Lanius cabanisi.

You're harsh 😉... You forgot the African vulture... And come on, it *is* a shrike—the genus was right, so 10/10 and 5/10 makes 15/20... (I’m not deducting points for the missing capital in Coracias or not using italics for the scientific name).

So, what’d John find?

Re-

(I don’t deduct points for the missing capital letter in Coracias or the lack of italics for the scientific name).

Oh really 😇?

Well, you were totally off😎

Except for Fiscal/Shrike 😛 😏

It's great to team up to try and identify birds 🙂

Hi Anne-Marie,

Thanks for your help. Here’s the long-awaited follow-up! 🙂 John learns that a group of lions (two females and one male) are lounging under a doum palm not far from where we are.

Mr. Punky and Madame



The other Madame



Somehow—word of mouth, I guess—he knows the park vets need to change the GPS collar on the big male. To do that, they have to sedate him and shoo away the two females.



Annoyed, the male decides to distance himself from the group.



And tries to shake off the anesthetic dart.



Hey! I didn’t do anything!



Mr. Punky starts feeling tired... so tired.



And falls asleep:

Now to move our two sleepy females away,



forcing them to leave their handsome male, pushing them far off where they’ll wait to rejoin him once the care is finished:



so that it can proceed safely.





With the help of the "Born Free" association.



We’re heading back happy. Thanks to the vets who let us witness this rather rare scene. Even Bernard was jealous ;). Wishing you all a beautiful sunset. Tomorrow, we’ll leave this stunning park and its inhabitants with the regret of not having explored it enough. But Sylvie’s travel journal is a great supplement: https://voyageforum.com/discussion/kenya-hors-sentiers-battus-d9781073/

Well spotted!

I thought it was the lionesses who got collared, since they’re the leaders of the group. First time I’ve seen a male decked out like that—no harm done, though! 😛

Bernard was envious of us😉.

He’s not the only one 😉. It’s pretty rare to witness a scene like that (and personally, I’d be way more tempted than by a kill scene). Muriel

Hi everyone,

Today we’re stopping over in Nairobi before heading to Amboseli the next day—our fourth park on this trip. We’ve got 300 km and over 6 hours of driving ahead, with the usual stops: lunch break, bathroom breaks, smoke breaks (John smokes but only outside the car), craft shop stops... the full union-mandated rest schedule. 😊 Naturally, we grill John about everything we see along the way. He’s way chattier on the road than he is in the parks.



Nairobi isn’t a pretty city, but I’ve already said that. It’s dynamic, noisy, and dusty—but yeah, I’ve mentioned that too. We’re staying in a fortified hotel due to the obvious safety concerns, though it’s packed with Europeans, Americans, Chinese—basically a cosmopolitan crowd. We’ll be here until tomorrow morning. After a standard breakfast, we hit the road again for Amboseli National Park and our lodge, Ol Tukaï. That’s 260 km of paved road and a bit of dirt track, so another 6+ hours with stops. And by "stops," I mean... well, you know. 🙂

Hi Muriel,

I totally agree!!

Me too! I’ve never seen a kill scene either, and I’m not sure I could handle seeing one 😅

Well, I obviously don’t agree 😇 What interests me about safaris is seeing the full life of the animals, from birth to death.

Just watching people put a collar on an animal—meh, unless I can chat with them about the why and how.

Hi Régis,

Actually, I’ll qualify that a bit. Seeing a kill scene doesn’t bother me. There’s a certain beauty in the wildness😛, and obviously, that’s what interests me—the beauty and wildlife. That’s why, like you, I take photos to preserve the memory and the beauty.

Some observers get excited seeing an animal take a life to feed its own (the sadistic perverts😉). Others feel compassion seeing an animal suffer and its life end that way (the confused ones, which I’m part of). It all depends on the observer’s sensitivity, what they identify with (predator or prey), and in this area, there’s no neutrality. No matter what anyone says, things are divided like that. Hence the opposing viewpoints. Curiously, they don’t stop us from looking at the kill with a clinical (detached) eye, but there’s a big gap between that and freeing ourselves from our emotions! Paradox: it’s precisely because I’m one or the other (or both) that for a moment, I belong to the wild. That’s also the condition for a successful image.

A kill scene usually starts with a fight, followed by the death, then the butchering. Those last sequences, in the act of survival, disgust me. It’s not denial but revulsion with no added aesthetic value. I don’t close my eyes or look away because I recognize the useful, fundamental, primal, and revolting nature of the scene... Civilization has passed through here🙂!



It’s beautiful, isn’t it 🙁!

So Eric, if I follow you correctly, I’m a sadistic pervert—maybe I should tone it down a bit. Do you have the same reaction when a bird kills an insect?

Anyway, all this is pretty funny because unless you’re vegetarian or vegan, it doesn’t bother you to do the same thing—you just outsource the killing to someone else. So we’re basically just hypocrites (and definitely not civilized).

But hey, we’re getting off topic 🤪

Hi everyone, Personally, it’s a scene (the collar fitting) I would’ve loved to see. We crossed paths with the "Born Free" foundation’s vehicle several times. It was created by the actors after the film of the same name, which tells the story of the Adamsons and their lioness Elsa. https://www.bornfree.org.uk/about-us

Scenes of kills don’t bother me—they’re part of life. I find them less disturbing than the daily discoveries of the atrocities humans invent against each other or nature to dominate the earth....

Meru is truly a park worth exploring. Don’t hesitate to spend several days there, and if possible, with a motivated guide 😉.

Hi Sylvie,

I’m not bothered by kill scenes—they’re part of life. They shock me less than the daily discovery of the atrocities humans invent against each other or nature to dominate the earth....

That’s too easy, this detached way of looking at things. In a kill scene, you can’t be neutral. Besides, that attitude belongs to the civilized mind, where distance silences the emotions that arise at the sight of a kill. In those moments, we’ll judge it more as strategy than horror. Prey or executioner, victim then predator. Never both at once, but in the succession of moments, one and the other. And when emotions fall silent, that detachment lets us accept life in its process—nothing more! What we call civilization is probably just the sum of layered structures that allow us to survive, even at the cost of blood. It’s another highly refined, sometimes sanitized version of the kill. There’s no contradiction in that. Going back to the essence of the Kill is also returning to what unites and sustains us.

Re-

So Eric, if I follow you correctly, I’m a sadistic pervert—I think maybe that needs some nuance. Do you have the same reaction when a bird kills an insect?

Okay, I’m probably exaggerating a little, but if we weren’t like this, I doubt we’d be who we are: humans who survive, capable of the best and the worst. It’s not that the death of an insect doesn’t affect me—it’s that it’s indifferent to me, simply insignificant because I don’t see it and I don’t feel empathy toward it. But if I were to develop that kind of "concern" for it, I’d think differently. Besides, I *do* have empathy for bees...😛

Anyway, all this makes me laugh because unless you’re vegetarian or vegan, you’re not bothered by doing the same thing—except you delegate the killing to someone else. So we could say we’re just hypocritical (and certainly not civilized).

Not 100% carnivorous but flexitarian, and it does bother me when I think about it—unless I have no kind of consideration for the animal I’m eating. As for delegating the killing, it’s a collective strategy, not an individual one... a rational act (of organization) aimed at the survival of all.

Hi Sylvie, Éric, Muriel, Régis, and everyone else,

Like Sylvie, kill scenes don’t shock me, but they don’t particularly appeal to me either. Predation is part of the system—death is essential to life as we know it, because without death, there’s no evolution. And a predation scene that doesn’t end with the predator feeding is a threat to its survival, especially for predators like cheetahs that expend so much energy hunting. I heard this ridiculous line in a documentary: "luckily, the gazelle got away"... Yeah, right—one or two more failures and it’s one less cheetah in an already dwindling population, while gazelles are a dime a dozen...

When it comes to collar-tagging scenes, I’m torn. The presence of a collar puts the animal at risk—first during the fitting, since tranquilization/anesthesia isn’t a harmless process. Afterward, wearing the collar itself can be dangerous, as studies (including documented cases with African wild dogs) have shown. Plus, the scientific value is often minimal, if not zero. That said, there are upsides: having people on the ground who care about wildlife, involving local communities with jobs tied to conservation, *some* scientific value (not always negligible), and better protection through population monitoring...

Best to all, and kisses to the rest,

BL

PS: One of the best things about your travel journal, Éric, is that it doesn’t just fuel birdwatching debates and nitpicking—it also sparks deeper reflections on wildlife, our habits, and how we perceive scenes of life (and death), e tutti quanti

I see you've really thought about the kill issue 😉

I agree about our feelings shifting from victim to predator...

As Bernard wrote in that awesome travel journal that adds depth to the experience 😎... bravo