184 : Grey-Backed Fiscal

Grey-Backed Fiscal - Lanius Exubitoroides

I saw this large member of the Shrike family out on the open grassland of the Serengetti on our first full morning's game drive. We had flown in the day before on the smallest plane I had ever been in - a 12 seater "Caravan" - the pilot had to oversee the baggage being packed into the plane and actually checked to make sure that the weight of the people was evenly distributed around the plane. The flight was about an hour up from a small airstrip near the Ngorogoro Conservation Area to the Northern Serengetti near the Mara river and the Tanzanian border with Kenya.

I could see animals from the plane and thought I could see signs of the great herd we had come to see. Somewhere out there !



So after a first night under canvas in the bush and an eventful drive in to Olakira from our landing strip which I will cover later we found ourselves trundling out over a rolling country dotted with Acacias and ribboned with small woods and streams all flowing down into great Mara River. We heard it before we saw it.

As far as we could see in every direction. We were seronaded by the constant music of a tens of thousands of wildebeeste pumping out their Gnu calls. Males rutting on the move - butting and chasing eachother for the attention of females. Animals swirling across the landscape - puddling - breaking off and reforming. A vast army of herbivores on the move. I am sorry but the nature programmes that suggest that the herd is some vulnerable thing attacked on all sides by lions, crocodiles, leopards etc. They wouldn't even make a dent - the herd has something like 4-500,000 calves in a single month. Yes some don't make it through their first year - but the losses balance out and 1.5-2 million animals are on the move year in and year out across this landscape. It has to be the greatest wildlife show on earth.

As if to the make the point I post a picture of the one (?) lion we saw in the 4 days we were privileged enough to be up there on the Mara with the herd. A lone female....

And then out of the grass two cubs. The herd just parted and let them through. Reforming behind them. The cubs would probably be in more danger of being crushed in the stampede if they took on this lot. More Wildebeeste die of thirst or accidents than get eaten by lions or hyenas or crocodiles - they nibble round the edge.

It was one giant assault on the senses... So much so that apparently many other animals just clear out of an area when a large part of the herd (or the "MegaHeeeerrrrrd !" as National Geographic screams at you during documentaries) arrives. Rhino will move off, Elephant and Giraffe - its the noise and the flies.

Good for Shrikes though I would think - Wildebeeste = dung = beetles = lizards = food for Shrikes. I don't know that scientifically but it must hold true. The herd is one great dinner - it chews hundreds of tons of grass each day like some giant lawn mower - mile wide swathes being visibly cut across the face of the savanah. Apparently there are millions and millions - billions of dung beetles that spend their life getting rid of the 400 tons of dung produced each day. Without the Dung Beetles the herd could not move - it would get stuck fast in its own excrement.

And there waving on a thorn bush my Grey-backed Fiscal - the only tiny splash of white in a vast sea of fawn, black and brown. Animals and grass as far as the eye could see for miles in every direction. For once birds outnumbered by the mammals.

Grey-backed Fiscal, Lanius exubitoroides

Northern Serengetti, Near Mara River, Tanzania

July 2012