As the males moved on, behind them travelling slightly slower were the female herds ready to start their mass calving. They appear to delay calving until the early morning has passed and by 10 am the hooves of fetuses were protruding from the rumps of most females - and within hours there were calves everywhere - we watched and photographed from start to finish calves being born, a process that invariably took 45-60 minutes and then once born taking their first steps within 2-3 minutes of hitting the ground.

Surprisingly for these first few days during the calving itself the Serengeti predators seemed to be keeping a surprisingly low profile - and although we saw a few lion, leopard, hyena and cheetah - there was not the killing bonanza that I had witness in previous years. The scale of the calving was spectacular as a female herd of maybe 30,000+ were now within a 5 mile radius of our camp, all day and all night we heard the chorus of several hundred thousand mouths young and old.

Within days this spectacle changed as the predators emerged - leopard, lion cheetah on one Kopje after another - one vehicle witnessed and photographed a lioness pulling down a young wildebeest to feed her recently weaned cubs, another saw two cases of crocodiles plunging out of a waterhole to drag a hapless drinking Zebra to it's death - and of course there were the hundreds of hyenas that were starting to gather on the periphery of the herds to take off the orphaned calves that seem to be so common at this period. For the next 2 weeks the herds continued their move northwestwards pushed onwards by the heat and drying rivers. The predators, like ourselves, remained behind, and on the day before our departure the rains returned and it seems the herds were planning an about turn for the next group of lucky visitors.

Our new classic mobile camp was as great as ever - great food, great hosts, wonderful guests. The facilities themselves more than one could expect - as we now have proper plumbed flushing toilets and running water into our en-suite bathrooms. The tents are wired with 3 sets of electric lights - so absolutely no compromise of comfort. In the main dining areas we had solar re-charging system, and a generator as a standby so that everybody could plug into to recharge those tired batteries and computers that digital photography seems to create these days. So... above is the 2007 trip itinerary.