We have a little time in Heathrow so Ken is going to try and post some of his pictures from Tanzania. Won’t get many up so he is working on his elephants right now. I thought I would share what the pictures are all about.

This was a large herd of over 100 elephants and there has been some interaction between the villagers and the elephants. The elephants can go right into the village and do a lot of destruction to the crops and buildings and the villagers try to chase them away, just as you have seen on TV shows. So our guide Joe approached them cautiously at first. A few head shakings by trumpeting by young bulls but overall they were very relaxed.

This proved to be a wonderful sighting with a lot of unusual behaviour and Ken’s pictures highlight some of what we saw.

A group of three youngsters were fighting over some dung on the ground. They were making a lot of noise and climbing on top of one another. One of the females finally had enough and came over with a lot of gusto to break up the nonsense taking place it was so much fun to watch this all happening.

A tiny baby was nursing not sure how old but the guide said about 6 weeks. His little trunk was wobbling all over the place and in the picture he has it straight up while nursing.

At one point a group of elephants came together and stood in a circle not moving at all. Many had their trunks on the top of the other elephants. Even a tiny baby stood very still on the outside of the circle. Our guide explained that an elephant must have died here and they can sense the spot and this was a mourning behaviour. He said that only direct family members would join the circle. Eventually they moved on and later a large bull crossed over to the exact same spot and did the same thing. He just stood there for a while sniffing the ground with his trunk and then moved on.

The next day a bull was NOT happy with us we got a lot of trumpeting, ear and head shaking and short charges forward. We watched him for a while then he started retreating but still trumpeting and generally telling us to leave.

Elephants here not as relaxed as the Sabi Sands elephants for sure but with a good guide we got just as close. He just moved slowly and in stages and they just carried on with what they would normally be doing. Hard to pick pictures he has some great shots we were with this herd for a long time and the only vehicle.

This is again a low density - lots of land and only a few vehicles. We only had one other vehicle at one sighting during our entire stay.