Our scheduled plan had been to visit Ngorongoro on our travel day leaving us a full day for the village tour and another day for our trip to Manyara NP where we might see tree-climbing lions. Because we chose to use our travel day just for travel, we had to cram Manyara into the afternoon after our village tour. While the tour was special and worth every minute it was a long, hot four hours. Fortunately, Manyara is only about one half hour away from Mto ba Mba. At the conclusion of our village tour, we headed there. We lunched at a lovely shaded picnic area next to the entrance kiosk. As usual, the lunch was more than we needed so we shared leftovers with an appreciated park staff.
Our first animals in the park was a congress of baboons including a few youngsters. We drove slowly through them getting some good views of parents and young children. We also saw a group of three elephants in the brush so we did not get such good views of them. Later we would see some cape buffalo and reedbuck, but no lions – trees or not.
About 15 after seeing the elephants we emerged from the forest onto a marshy plain littered with birds. Large flocks of Yellow-billed Storks, Flamingoes, Egyptian Geese, and Cattle Egrets were the vast majority of our sightings. We also saw quite a few African Jacana (the Jesus bird that walks on water or seems to as it runs across the lily pads) and Squacco Heron. The only lifer today was an African Hawk Eagle. After spending about an hour meandering across the plain, we again entered the woods where we saw another congress of baboons and a pair of Southern Ground Hornbills as we made our way out of the park back to the Lodge.
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| Ruff? |
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| Three-banded Plover |
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| Yellow-billed Storks |
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| African Jacana |
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| Squacco Heron |
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| Yellow-billed Storks |
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