Great Serengeti Wildebeest Migration Guide And Best Time To See It In 2022-2023

2019 And Upcoming 2020 Tracker Updates On The Great Wildebeest Migration Herd In Serengeti

The Great Wildebeest Migration in the Serengeti is the largest single movement of wild animals in the world, deservedly listed as one of its eight Natural Wonders and an exceptional inspiration for a dream nature tour of northern Tanzania with Mkama Tours to Tanzania . Around 1.5 million wildebeests, with hundreds of thousands of zebras, elands, gazelles along with a trailing retinue of predators, leave their calving grounds in southern Serengeti, around March and April, heading for the next water source. Trekking via the south-central Seronera outskirts into the Western Corridor and Grumeti River arriving during the month of April to May and residing till June, and then finally towards the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya crossing the perilous Mara River around July or August onwards with a return via the same death-defying river, this time heading to the bearing of Lobo and Loliondo in eastern Serengeti around October to November. The white bearded wildebeest journey continues back to the southern Ndutu calving grounds with arrivals starting around December with temporary residence till March

There are distinct best times for a nature trip to Serengeti. Once you know what you have experienced and what more it has to offer, you will want to return time and again as each month unfolds a new chapter in the story of the Great Wildebeest Migration and each area holds the key to entrancing new sights. There is no fixed table of events. All depends on the coming of the rains, which can vary by several weeks, but in Serengeti National Park, light short rains usually fall in November and December, when the migrating wildebeest and zebra herds return to the southern Ndutu plains to crop fresh grass in the company of elands, Thompson’s and Grant’s gazelles whilst the white-bearded wildebeests await the mass calving around February. This is an event well worth watching. Every day for about three weeks, an estimated 8000 newborn foals stagger to their feet within minutes of being dropped and follow their mothers. Whether you are charmed by the spectacle of new life or thrilled by the hunting predators, you will certainly be moved by this annual blockbuster event. The long rains in northern Tanzania occur between April and May with sprinkles starting around the middle of March and dusting by early June, when the grass plains blossom with short-lived flowering plants. Then the herds turn northward through the western Serengeti corridor and along the central outskirts. The Grumeti River crossing is a perilous trap in June and July, haunted by giant Nile crocodile who grab their herbivore victims by the throat and bear them under water.

Aside from of the migratory hordes, the national park is serenely occupied by other resident mammals with endless behavioral interactions, not least herds of elephant, families of giraffe, prides of lions, coalitions of cheetahs, solitary and leap leopards, black rhinos and hundreds of small mammals including primates like vervet monkeys and olive baboons, small cats like caracals wildcats, genets and hundreds and hundreds of birds. Some Mkama Tours to Tanzania repeater safari guests have said the graduated and finest quality time for safari travel in East Africa is when the Serengeti plains are quiet from the thundering hooved gnus and when the majority of the peak season sapien visitors have . From August to October, the wildebeests cross the swollen Mara River to journey into Masai Mara National Reserve in an epic battle of endurance as stampeding gnus are pushed in a heaving tide of horns, hooves and flanks, down the riverside cliffs, across the roaring waters and into the jaws of grinning crocodiles. But the herd goes on, a single intelligence, focused on return to its southern foaling grounds where the saga initiates again. Choose what time you will, your personalized Africa tour in Serengeti will be an unforgettable revelation of an endangered world.

The dates timing of the migration depends upon the annual rains and renewal of fresh pasture which may seasonally occur earlier or later in some years. But the spectacle is worth the effort to make a photo safari in Tanzania as multitudes of wild gnus pour across the plains, driven by instinct or necessity in such a way that they act as one entity, pursuing their destiny, to rut, mate, dare and die on this impossibly perilous journey, which, nevertheless, ensures the ultimate survival of the wildebeest and the continuance of the Serengeti ecosystem of which they are the mainspring. Their epic journey is one of violence and endurance as they battle onwards, past granite kopjes where cheetah or lion lie in ambush, through flood-swollen and crocodile infested rivers, over parched plains scorched by wildfires, to sanctuary in the north. Then, homing in on distant rains, they circle back again, daring greater hazards by the same water, by exhaustion and by predators, shedding a quarter of their numbers by the wayside. To appreciate the enormity of this phenomenon, you must take part, tracking and observing from 4×4 game-viewing vehicles, filming from the ground or in the air in a hot air balloon to zoom in on the action as if the unending grasslands were your theatre with your own cast of millions acting out their ancient ritual for you alone.