February 7, 2011
Hyena in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

The second day of my safari in Tanzania, and our first full day in Ngorongoro Crater, was spectacular too!

We left the lodge around 6:00, before the 6:40-ish sunrise, and headed down into Ngorongoro Crater for our first full day in the crater. The first new species we saw was a black rhino, and not just one, but two adults and a young one. They were too far away to photograph, but it's always nice to watch this endangered species and introduce first-time visitors to them. The next new species were a black-backed jackal and a group of eland. Eland are the largest antelope and are usually quite shy. Fortunately, these individuals were tolerant of our approach and we captured some nice images. Later, we came upon two big male lions walking near the road. They were watching a small herd of wildebeest nearby and gave us lots of opportunities to photograph them.

We had a boxed breakfast around 8:00 at a waterhole where some elephants were drinking and a gray heron, a goliath heron, and a pied kingfisher were fishing.

Then we found two other male lions at a zebra kill right by the road. They had finished eating and were just resting. A golden jackal was tempted to come in to have a piece of the zebra, but it was really skittish and didn't want to come too close to all of those Land Rovers and Land Cruisers filled with people. After the jackal left, we left too and came across some Coke's hartebeest.

We found another black rhino that was just within shooting range, and my clients were quite happy to get some images of a rhino.

We had a boxed lunch at a picnic area that was crowded with kites, helmeted guineafowl, and other birds, looking for an easy meal.

After lunch, we came upon a group of Rüppell's vultures eating a dead spotted hyena. The hyena was probably killed by a collision with a vehicle, and it was quite interesting to watch the scavengers (vultures) eat a scavenger (the hyena).

Later, we stopped to photograph an adult spotted hyena. Soon, a young spotted hyena approached our vehicle and was quite curious — it chewed on our right front tire and mud flap! It also gave us a great opportunity to get some nice portrait head shots.

I took the image with my new Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS II USM and Extender EF 2x III. I'm using that lens and extender on my Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III as my short lens to compliment my Canon EF 500mm f4 L IS USM and Extender EF 1.4x III on my EOS 1D Mark IV as my long lens, and I absolutely love it. The 70-200 with the 2x focuses much faster than the 500 f4 and 1.4x, and the image quality is spectacular. I'm very glad I'm using that combination instead of my old Sigma AF 120-300mm f2.8 APO EX IF USM with a Canon 1.4x II.