Serengeti
From the Maasai word meaning "endless plains", this is a world heritage site. The park covers 14,763km2. To the east and south vast open grasslands are punctuated with occasional kopjes (rocky outcrops) while to the west and north grasslands are interspersed with hills and open woodland sliced by rivers. Near Seronera, yellow fever trees and palm thickets line the river and its hippo pools. The grassland to the east is home to large groups of Thomson's and Grant's gazelle, spotted hyenas, jackals, and such birds as the double banded couser, yellow throated sand grouse, red capped lark, Fisher's sparrow-lark and capped wheater.
The great migration
As part of their famous clockwise migration, more than 1 million wildebeests, 200,000 zebras, and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle descend upon the short grass plains of the south eastern Serengeti at the start of the rainy season around December. After calving in January and February, hey scatter over the southern and central plains. By May the rains end, the grass has been reduced to stubble and the animals begin their long march to dry-season grazing grounds near the permanent water of the Serengeti's northern woodlands and Kenya's Masai Mara. Reaching these destinations by approximately July, they remain until October, when they back to the southeast.