Masai Mara National Park
Masai Mara National Park is the world’s most famous for big game viewing! The reserve approximately 275 km from Nairobi, was opened in November 1974 and has since become Kenya’s most famous and popular animal reserve. Merely the best big-game country in Kenya and should not be missed on a Kenya Safari.
This area includes the Masai Mara National Reserve of 181,200 ha and the surrounding wildlife dispersal areas of 482,800 ha in southwestern Kenya. Collectively, the reserve and its surrounds are often called the Greater Mara. In 1996, it was nominated for designation as a World Heritage Site.
Masai Mara National Park – To the north, east and west are large parcels of land demarcated as group ranches owned and inhabited by the semi-nomadic pastoral Masai people. Habitats in the Masai Mara are varied, including open rolling grassland, riverine forest, Acacia woodland, swamps, non-deciduous thickets, boulder-strewn slopes, and Acacia, Croton and Tarchonanthus scrub. The permanent Mara and Talek rivers and their tributaries flow through the reserve and approximately trisect it. There is a pronounced rainfall gradient from the drier east with 800 mm rain/year to the wetter west with 1,200 mm/year.
Birding Masai Mara National Reserve
Masai Mara National Park – As an endemic bird area, Masai Mara has all the three of Serengeti Plains and one of the eight species of the Kenya Mountains Endemic Bird Areas that occur in Kenya. Seven globally threatened species were recorded here; they include the Madagascar Pond-Heron, Pallid Harrier, Jackson’s Widowbird, Red-throated Tit, Grey-crested Helmet-shrike, Corncrake, and Lesser Kestrel. Regionally threatened species include Circaetus cinerascens, Hieraaetus ayresii, Anhinga rufa, Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis, Trigonoceps occipitalis, Polemaetus bellicosus, Stephanoaetus coronatus, Coturnix adansonii which is a rare intra-African migrant, Buphagus africanus, Casmerodius albus, Podica senegalensis, Neotis denhami, Scotopelia peli, and Porzana pusilla.
Masai Mara National Park – More than 500 other bird species are known to occur, including 12 species of Cisticola and 53 birds of prey. Grassland birds are exceptionally well represented. Large numbers of Palearctic migrants winter in the area, including Caspian PloverandWhite Stork.
There is a single record of Shoebill Stork, from the Musiara Swamp.
Masai Mara National Park – The Mara’s extensive grasslands are a stronghold for the threatened, migratory Corncrake and the threatened, restricted-range Jackson’s widowbird. The woodlands around the reserve are probably the centre of abundance for the vulnerable, restricted range Grey-crested Helmet-shrike. The restricted-range Rufous-tailed Weaver has recently been sighted within the reserve, near the southern border, and may be expanding its range northwards.
Other wildlife (Home of the “BIG FIVE”)
Masai Mara National Park – The Masai Mara is remarkable for its high concentration of large herbivores and their attendant predators. The extraordinary annual migration of over 1.5 million Wildebeests and over 200,000 Grant’s zebra that starts from the Serengeti plains to the Mara grasslands from late June is world famous. There are also large numbers or the African Elephant, African Lion, Hippopotamuses and the Nile crocodile in the vast Musiara Swamp, Topi, Gazelles, some primates, and many more.
The Masai People
Masai Mara National Park – The Masai Mara tour would seem incomplete without an encounter with the legendary Masai people from which the reserve derives the name. They are strongly independent people, still paying a lot of attention to their traditional rituals. Strikingly tall and slender, swathed in brilliant locally made red cloth, hung about with beads and metal jewellery. Young men prefer long, plaited, ochre-daubed hairstyles and have a formidable reputation for glamour, prowess, and ferocity.
Traditionally the Maasai live off the milk and blood of their beloved cattle and believe that all the animals in the world are theirs.
The Masai People believe they are not just residents of this area but are much a part of the life of the land as the land is part of their lives.
Masai Mara National Reserve is the world’s most famous for big game viewing!
CNN 2013, ranked Maasai Mara Game Reserve Number 1 best national park in Africa
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