The wildebeest have arrived! They came just in time for Christmas and over a million of them with hundreds of thousands of zebra make it the greatest wildlife spectacle on the planet.
At times they passed right through the Lodge itself. One evening a herd of wildebeest came galloping through and they seemed to go on forever. 
I tried to count them although I soon gave up, as there were thousands. Once the last animal had past, quiet again returned to the woodlands leaving only the pleasant smell of crushed grass and the faint aroma of animals and the feeling we had witnessed something very special.
Over the Christmas period friends from the Serengeti Research Institute visited. They had been working on the Tanzania carnivore census and had been using camera traps in remote forest areas of Tanzania. We thought that it would be fun to put a camera up at the Lodge one night. After much debate and adjusting we finally put it up a short distance from the last room. We left to enjoy an evening by the camp-fire, wondering what weird and wonderful creatures might be prowling around the lodge in the dead of night? 
So it was with much excitement that we down loaded the pictures onto a laptop the following morning. We made one drastic error! We had forgot to tell the Night watchmen about our plan. Askaris as they are known in East Africa, are on duty to escort guests back to their rooms if lions or elephants are close by. With modern digital technology it took pictures of some very curious men with torches creeping up to this strange box, which flashed light at them. Every hour during the night we got some great pictures of their feet. When we explained what we had done the following morning, we all roared with laughter. We tried again the next night, hoping for better luck. And we weren’t disappointed. We had some beautiful pictures of a white-tailed mongoose and then something that made our day, a striped hyena, which stayed for ages and posed beautifully for the camera.
After working for 35 years as a cook in Ndutu Safari Lodge, Mzee John has decided to retire, so he can spend more time with his family. It was an evening of mixed emotions at John’s retirement party recently. Happy because the entire Ndutu staff were there to wish him good luck but sad to be losing such a nice person. Family members from his home near Kilimanjaro came to Ndutu for the party, and after three hours of speeches we sat down to a huge pilau dinner. Each department, waiters, room stewards and of course kitchen staff competed to give John ever bigger good-bye presents. John is personally responsible for much weight gain amongst guests and certainly the managers at Ndutu! His departure will certainly leave a void in everyone’s life, as he was without doubt the nicest person to work with. It’s not possible to just walk away from such a big part of your life and John has asked to come back time-to-time to help out and to catch up with old friends, so hopefully we’ll still see John once in a while.
Mzee John and Wilbrod (head chef)
We enjoyed breakfast this morning while watching a group of hartebeest gambolling around in front of the dining room. 
They were later joined by some zebra, which made for an idyllic scene. DT, the notorious bull elephant has visited many times recently. Walking right up to the small birdbath in front of the dining room one morning, which caused quite a stir. Too good of a photographic opportunity to miss, one guest ran back to his room to collect a camera, but only to discover the elephant standing right outside the door. He was effectively trapped in his room for a short while until the elephant had eaten a particularly tasty bush on the path.
The Tanzania wet land bird count got under way this month. Birding experts from around the world came to Tanzania to help local birders count wetland birds. 
I was pleased to hear that two Norwegian birders were being sent to Ndutu to help with the count. The two soda lakes at Ndutu are very important bird habitat. Although we try to record all species each month for the Tanzanian bird atlas project, the idea of having to count thousands of turns and little stints sounded beyond me, so the help was much appreciated. We counted to the backdrop of thousands of wildebeest and fried in the hot sun, especially the Norwegians who hadn’t seen much daylight in the Northern winter. There were very few flamingos present at the time, only 300 or so but huge numbers of white black-winged terns and some gull-billed terns and over a thousand black-winged stilts on lake Masek.
Also four new birds have been added to the Ndutu bird list this Month. The best for me was the collared palm thrush, which must have been blow off course during one of the recent storms. Normally you have to do a lot of rubber necking to catch a glimpse of a new bird but not this one, it’s very tame and walks in and out of the gift shop. Others include little bitten, lesser honey guide and white rumped swift.
Visitors to Ndutu this past month could not have been disappointed by the profusion of wildlife present at this time of year. Over looking the causeway between the two Lakes the other evening we saw zebra, wildebeest, giraffes, impala, elephants and lions all in one view. A lioness even tried to hunt, although unsuccessful, she caused pandemonium and sent animals running in all directions except for a large bull giraffe. He looked rather confused, and while everything else ran by in clouds of dust and panic he just watched on. Once quiet had returned he was the only animal left from the hundreds that had been there moments earlier, he then continued to feed from the bush he was eating. I thought he had great composure but of course he might have just been a bit dim?
Paul,
Ndutu Safari Lodge,
