Silhouette City
The early bird catches the wildebeest…
The Last Mile
I spent my second week in the Masai Mara at Kicheche Valley Camp, and you can probably sum it up in three words: cats, birds and silhouettes! I managed to see my ‘traditional’ cheetah kill, photographed many birds in flight and started and finished most days by taking sunrise and sunset silhouettes.
Let’s have a look at a few highlights…
The Camp
Tent City
I’ve been to Kicheche four times, so they know me there, but the levels of customer service there are exceptional, and I received a typically warm welcome. I arrived at midday, and I was greeted by Minnie (the manager), Bernard (my driver), Alex and Faith.
Minnie had a glass of Coke waiting for me, which was a nice touch, and I just had to sign one form before Alex took me to my tent. It was number 3 (‘Uni’), the closest to the main area—which is exactly what I’d asked Ann for at Bush Camp! On the bed, spelled out in grass stalks was the message ‘Welcome home, Nick’!
My tent
Daily Routine
The daily routine was pretty much the same as in Bush Camp:
0515 Wake up
0545 Mango smoothie in the main area
0550-1130 Morning game drive with Bernard in the LandCruiser (including juice and a smoothie at around 0830, followed by another one back at camp)
1300-1330 Lunch in the main area (although I didn’t eat anything)
1545 Juice in the main area
1550-1830 Afternoon game drive with Bernard (including sundowners)
2000 Dinner in the main area
In my free time, I went to my tent to rate my photos, recharge my camera batteries and surf the internet. The electricity supply and Wi-Fi signal were fine, and I was a bit pickier about my ratings, which left me enough time to do my usual social media blast every day. I didn’t use to do that when I was abroad, but that cost me too many likes and followers…!
Food and Drink
Apart from one disastrous beef dish, the food at Valley Camp was better than at Bush Camp—although there were a few spelling mistakes on the menu board. I’d never eaten ‘Mediterranian vegetables or ‘beef tornadoes’ before!
However, I do remember one dinner with Minnie, Sarah and David when the main course was red snapper in a cream cheese sauce, which was absolutely delicious!
In addition, I explained to Minnie my problem about not being able to enjoy my usual drinks when I’m away from home. In London, I start my day with a mango lassi and then have a double espresso later. During the rest of the day, I drink fizzy water with the occasional bottle of Belvoir sparkling elderflower for a treat!
Unfortunately, it’s hard to get any of those drinks in Africa, so I normally have to make do with fruit juice and Coke. However, Minnie was keen to do her best to give me what I wanted. I had to explain what a ‘lassi’ was, but with the help of Google, she asked one of the staff to come up with a homemade version—and it was delicious!
Staff
Of all the staff at Valley Camp, I obviously spent most of my time with Bernard. He was an excellent guide, and his English was good enough to make it easy to chat to him. His only minor fault was that he kept forgetting to use the clockface method to point out sightings. It didn’t come naturally to him, and he couldn’t really get to grips with it, so he kept pointing and saying, ‘Over there!’—which was absolutely no use to man nor beast…!
In addition, he kept forgetting to tell me the names of any birds we saw. I always keep a species list of all the animals and birds I see on my trips. I’m pretty good with the names of the animals, but I always need help with the birds—especially the ‘little brown jobs’. My species lists suggest I only saw 42 different birds at Valley Camp compared to 89 at Bush Camp, but I think that was just because Bernard was a bit more forgetful than Josphat…!
After Bernard, I spent the most time with Minnie. She was always friendly and keen to hear my feedback on the food, the staff and anything else I came across during my stay. I appreciated all her efforts to give me a tailor-made experience—even down to the food and drink options on the menu. She also went to a lot of effort to get me packets of Strepsils and Sudafed from the local chemist when I got a cold, and she once slapped Bernard down for putting a water bottle in his jeep after I’d said I didn’t need one!
When it comes to the rest of the staff, I didn’t really get to talk to them much. I thought I recognised one or two from previous visits, but it was hard to tell. Everyone was on first-name terms, and they were sometimes so familiar with me that I didn’t know if it was because they’d met me before or if they were just naturally friendly!
Guests
The only other guests when I arrived in camp were Jenny and Graham, but they preferred to eat lunch and dinner and go on game drives on their own, so I didn’t have much of a chance to chat to them except over drinks at the campfire pit.
After a few days, Sarah and David arrived, but, again, we didn’t have time to socialise very much, and I spent all my game drives with Bernard and no other guests. That was handy from a photographic point of view, but I do like spending time with people in the bush, so it was also a little disappointing.
Wildlife photography
Last Orders
Now we get to the important bit! I obviously didn’t go to Kicheche on holiday. I was there for the wildlife photography opportunities. So how did it rate this time?
Let’s find out…
Cats
All the Kicheche guides talk to one another on the radio or back at camp, and they sometimes even call friends working for different companies, so they pick up a lot of information on the grapevine.
This is especially valuable when it comes to the cats because they know when they last ate. That means they can work out when they’re likely to hunt again. This is vital information when it comes to deciding where to go on game drives, especially if you want to see a cheetah hunt.
The last time I’d been to Valley Camp in January 2024, I’d managed to take a lovely sequence of photos showing a cheetah catching an impala, including, crucially, several shots with both in the frame. (I was especially pleased with that as Jeffrey Wu had once heckled me on social media for posting an image of a cheetah on its own!)
Needless to say, that’s what I was hoping for this time, but it wasn’t to be. I did see a cheetah, Namunyak, take down a male impala, but, as Bill Clinton might say, “It depends what you mean by ‘see’…!”
Unfortunately, they went behind some trees during the chase, so I didn’t see the actual takedown—even though Bernard somehow managed to get a good shot of it with his Canon! Very annoying...
I did get a few sharp slow pans of Namunyak in full flow at 1/25 of a second, but either another impala or another vehicle was always in the way.
When Namunyak brought down the impala, she didn’t manage to kill it immediately, and her cub ended up tucking in to its hindquarters while it was still alive!
Apart from the cheetahs, I also had a few sightings of lions and leopards, At one point, we saw the Iakisiu pride of 40 lions walking towards the river and then a male from the Lemek coalition that has already taken over one pride.
Amongst the leopards I saw were Figlet’s cubs, Flash and Spot (see below). Figlet is the daughter of the famous Fig, whom I never managed to see in all my visits to Kicheche, sadly, so it was nice to see a few of her descendants, at least!
I also saw Sanquet and her cub Nadala (‘Playful’) a few times. These were the same leopards I watched playing together in January 2024, so it was nice to see them again.
Birds
When people ask me if I photograph birds, I often say, “Yes—if there aren’t any animals around…!” However, I don’t really mean it. Of my current favourite 100 wildlife images, 27 show birds rather than animals, and that’s a pretty decent share.
Unless you happen to be a birdwatcher (or ‘birder’), you’re probably more interested in spotting the big cats than a grey-headed kingfisher or a red-necked spurfowl. However, that’s not a fair comparison.
If you see a lion, it’s almost certainly going to be lying dozing in the shade, but if you see a bird, you can pretty much guarantee it’ll take off within a few minutes. That means you’ll have the chance to take an action shot of a much more colourful creature than any lion!
In practice, I adopt a mixed strategy. When I’m in Kicheche, cheetah hunts are the priority, but if all the cheetahs have gone to the Masai Mara National Reserve or they’re lying down digesting a huge meal, I’ll move on to my next targets, leopards and lions, followed by birds.
My favourite African birds are the birds of prey, of course, but also the rollers, kingfishers and bee-eaters. They might not be as large or impressive as a martial eagle, but they’re a lot more colourful, and I’m much more likely to see one fishing or catching insects.
I was a bit disappointed by the paucity of lilac-breasted rollers and little bee-eaters when I went to Kicheche, but there were certainly plenty of birds of prey and kingfishers. In fact, there were so many grey-headed kingfishers in one particular spot that Bernard started calling it ‘The Kingfisher Strip’!
The grey-headed kingfisher is probably not as attractive as the lilac-breasted roller or little bee-eater, but its wings are actually quite similar to those of the roller, and if you’re lucky enough to see it in flight, you’ll be able to see the full glory of its plumage (see below).
Silhouettes
I took most of my other images either at sunrise or sunset. Fortunately, the weather was much better than on my last visit in January 2024, when it rained every day! That meant I was usually able to start and finish the day by taking silhouettes of various animals on the horizon, mostly giraffes, blue wildebeests and topis.
This was pretty much the same as what I was doing at Bush Camp, but I was still happy to get so many opportunities to photograph giraffes, in particular. As I’ve said many times before, you always get once-in-a-lifetime experiences when you go to Africa, but they’re always different.
At Bush Camp, I was able to photograph giraffes silhouetted on the horizon for the very first time, and I could do the same at Valley Camp. Giraffes were the equivalent of London buses—you waited five minutes, and they came in threes!
If I were picky, I’d say that I could’ve done with a few more clouds in the sky. I do like the simplicity of a single animal silhouetted on the horizon against an orange sky, but clouds provide a little bit more variety and background interest (see below). I hope there are enough for you…!
Other
Apart from cats, birds and silhouettes, I didn’t really photograph anything else! However, I did capture a couple of sparring matches between male impalas and zebras. In addition, I did take a few slow pans.
I’m sure most of you know by now my fondness for the slow pan (H/T Paul Goldstein)! I didn’t get many opportunities at Valley Camp, but one of them came when we found Namunyak and her cub on a great plain, stalking a herd of Thomson’s gazelles.
The gazelles would often stampede for no apparent reason, which should’ve been a great opportunity for slow pans. However, I didn’t have enough time to react in time, which was very frustrating. It didn’t help when I got back to camp and heard that an American family had just seen a lion fighting with a hyena!
Verdict
Grazing
Kicheche is probably my favourite place in Africa. I have many happy memories of photographing cheetahs and leopards there, plus a host of other animals. This particular trip wasn’t perhaps as rewarding as I’d been expecting, and I only came away with two five-star images, but it was still very enjoyable. As I often say, you can’t argue with Mother Nature. You get what you’re given!
My visit to Kicheche Bush Camp and Valley Camp brought 2024 to a close. Over the course of the year, I managed to go on five separate trips to Africa, visiting three new countries and spending 12 weeks on safari so, in a way, it was an annus mirabilis.
That was mostly down to the windfall I received when I remortgaged my flat in Notting Hill! My coffers are now empty, but I’ve already been invited to Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe in February as the resident photographer, so I hope I’ll be back in the saddle again soon...!
Species
Animals (34)
African bush elephant
Banded mongoose
Bat-eared fox
Black-backed jackal
Blue wildebeest
Cape buffalo
Coke’s hartebeest
Common eland
Common ostrich
Common warthog
Defassa waterbuck
Dung beetle
Dwarf mongoose
Grant’s gazelle
Helmeted terrapin
Hippopotamus
Impala
Kirk’s dik-dik
Leopard
Leopard tortoise
Lion
Masai giraffe
Olive baboon
Plains zebra
Rock hyrax
Scrub hare
Serval
Slender mongoose
Spotted hyena
Thomson’s gazelle
Topi
Vervet monkey
Birds (42)
Barn swallow
Bateleur
Black-chested snake-eagle
Black-shouldered kite
Black-winged lapwing
Caspian plover
Cinnamon-breasted bunting
Coqui francolin
Crowned lapwing
Egyptian goose
Emerald-spotted wood-dove
Fork-tailed drongo
Grey crowned crane
Grey-backed fiscal
Grey-headed kingfisher
Hamerkop
Helmeted guineafowl
Hildebrandt’s starling
Kori bustard
Lappet-faced vulture
Lilac-breasted roller
Martial eagle
Montagu's harrier
Northern wheatear
Northern white-crowned shrike
Pied kingfisher
Pygmy kingfisher
Red-necked spurfowl
Ring-necked dove
Saddle-billed stork
Secretary bird
Silverbird
Steppe eagle
Superb starling
Tawny eagle
Three-banded plover
Usambiro barbet
White-backed vulture
White-headed buffalo-weaver
Wire-tailed swallow
Yellow bishop
Yellow-fronted canary
If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.
If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.
