June 26th 2013 – Central Serengeti, Tanzania

On our way to the Western Corridor of the Serengeti, we slept one night in a beautiful camp on the hills between Seronera and  Moru Kopjes. Out at first light, we had an amazing encounter with a magnificent cat, a Serval, a young male. Some Servals are shy, others are quite relaxed and will let you take pictures at them. But this one was beyond relaxed. As we parked, he immediately approached our vehicle and started sniffing the tyres and the bull bar. To our amazement, he then jumped on the bonnet and laid comfortably there. I had never seen a Serval do that. It was a chilling morning, so maybe he was attracted to the heat generated by the engine. After laying for some time he went back into the grass and caught a couple of mice. He didn’t eat them right away though. He enjoyed playing with them, releasing them and catching them again, at times even tossing them in the air. As he disappeared in the grass we said goodbye and proceeded on our long journey to the west of the park, about 100 Kms across plains and into valleys. We had heard reports of the migration having passed already on its way to the north, and indeed we didn’t see many Wildebeests. We were also a bit surprised to see hundreds of kilometers of park recently burned, from Central all the way to the Western border. Tanzanian authorities normally start controlled bush fires in this season, as they burn dry grass and clear the way for fresh green grass to grow again. There is controversy on this, as overdoing this practice can in the long run deplete the pastures, and furthermore, many species of animals are particularly vulnerable to fires, such as rats and snakes. But also Cheetahs with newborn cubs might end up losing them if they are not big enough to walk with their mothers away from the fire.