Nairobi National Park

Your writer was taught ‘safari’ by his mother, now 85, who stopped by for a run in the Nairobi National Park last saturday on her way to Tanzania…… First we came across Ujonjo at the top of the Mokoyeti valley He proceeded to bellow -the first time that Ma had seen a lion roaring Down [...]

Photos by Ned Knocker (aged 10): The Nairobi National Park black rhinos are much more difficult to see than the introduced whites, which are placid owing to their inbred genetic inheritance. Black females (which nearly always have calves at heel) usually trot off at the approach of a vehicle….. Not so this bull, encountered on [...]

Files of zebra have come into the park in the last week from the plains in the background:the fast diminishing ‘dispersal area’….. Most of the park’s kongoni population stay IN the park, but the few that have moved out in the wet season now move back…. Even our last few wildebeest are on the move- [...]

Yesterday Yumi the leopard researcher came to look at leopard pugs behind Silole Cottage & gave me an update on the research she is doing on NNP leopards. She collared 2 leopards in order to monitor their movements.One is ‘ours’: she lives in the park & in the Silole Sanctuary abutting the park, whilst the [...]

There are several pairs of Secretary birds in NNP: so-called because of the ‘scribes quills’ which decorate the back of their necks….. These large,  mainly terrestial raptors stride purposefully across the savannah looking for large insects, rodents & reptiles to stamp on with their powerful legs. Notice the very sharp-looking beak!

Yesterday, in the Athi Basin, we came across what I believe to be the last cheetah in Nairobi National Park: a large male. He had killed a hen ostrich & on our approach, trotted off (an extremely wary cheetah, this: he would have to be , would he not, to be the last survivor? Paradoxically [...]

Photos by Ned Knocker: We met a group of 6 white (or grass ) rhinos on the way to school….. There are 11 in total in Nairobi National Park; one of the translocated females gave birth justs days after arriving from Nakuru NP…… Here she is……one could never get this close to our native black [...]

Ujonjo was the last adult male lion left in Nairobi National Park when the population of lions (historical average 30) dropped to just 7 individuals in 2005. Since then the population has bounced back to an estimated 35-40 individuals. Here he is photographed outside the Park in the Silole Sanctuary……. He was recently observed killing [...]