Bill Murray's Blog, page 96
January 18, 2017
Lunchtime for Cheetahs
Here is a sequence of a cheetah stalking, catching and killing a gazelle from our recent visit to the Mara North Conservancy in Kenya:
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First she spies an animal that bears scrutiny. She gets low to the ground.
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It doesn’t take long to draw a crowd, which is keeping a respectful distance.
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And the chase is on. It’s going to be the guy with the antlers.
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Closing the gap.
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This will just about do it.
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And it’s lunchtime for the cheetah and her two young male cubs.
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January 7, 2017
January 5, 2017
Celebrity Rhinos
Here is Queen Elizabeth, a rhino at the ol chorro rhino sanctuary, North Mara Conservancy, Kenya. They set up the sanctuary in 2008 in hopes of mating a pair of rhinos. At the time Kenya had just come through an election that resulted in violence, and former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was called in to mediate. Hence the names of the rhinos, Kofi Annan and Queen Elizabeth. Kofi Annan – the rhino – is not yet old enough to mate.
Click the photo to enlarge.
Suspected Impostor
A very suspect Masaai cattle herder spotted a week or so back, in Kenya.
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January 4, 2017
Great Big Circle
Flying the Qatar Airways 15+ hour nonstop from Doha to ATL last week took us on a great circle route that would be fascinating to do on the surface, straight up the Caspian Sea, closer to Baku than to the Turkmenistan coast, then east of Grozny, along the edge of the Volga flood plain west of Astrakhan, beyond which it’s not far from the Kazakh border.
Further north we crossed the southwestern Russian agricultural heartland, not far east of the frozen conflict in the Donbass. Then across the Baltics, just south of St. Petersburg and Helsinki, across Norway and over the sea near Bergen, entirely north of Iceland, across the Greenland ice cap north of Tasiilaq, from Baffin Island down west of Cleveland and on in.
We passed over Esfahan and just to the west of Qom and Teheran:
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Those of you who have gotten to southwest Iran before us will know this, but judging from this photo there may not be many of you: Southwest Iran looks pretty darned desolate.
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January 1, 2017
For the Benefit of Elephants
It was an honor and a privilege to meet Cynthia Moss, Director of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and author of Portraits in the Wild: Animal Behavior in East Africa and Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family, among others, at her research facility in Amboseli last week. She does fine work.
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December 30, 2016
Leopard in the Wild
It was a thrill to get this close to a leopard in the bush last week in the Mara North Conservancy, Kenya. Thanks to everybody at the excellent Kicheche Camp. Click the photo to make it much bigger.
December 29, 2016
Out of the Ordinary
Unusual day in Doha, Qatar this past Monday, 26 December, 2016, with thick fog hovering over the ground all day long. This did not please sun seeking holiday makers from abroad.
The staff down at the beach on the other hand, imported workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan are used to standing out there in 45C weather all day every day. It even gets to 52C (125F) sometimes, one told me. For them the cooler temperatures and deserted waterfront were a different story.
Said one, “It is awesome, sir!”
December 26, 2016
Flights to Everywhere
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Flying from Doha, Qatar airport this morning, with flights to Maputo, Edinburgh and Baghdad, among others. That’s pretty diverse.
December 25, 2016
A Day with Leopards
We had the chance to spend a few hours with leopards the other day with our fine guide George Nampaso at the Kicheche Camp in the Mara North Conservancy, Kenya. It was our great fortune to find a mating pair. It seems that after mating a female leopard will give birth in about three months, then stay with the cubs for about a year, until they are old enough to go off on their own. She won’t mate again until the cubs have left, so that this is a once-every-fifteen-months event.
It was a thrill and a privilege. Here are some photos of them that day.
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