The Mamba Nursery

The Swahili word for Crocodile is "Mamba".  

We visited one of our sites this last week.  We have renamed it "The Mamba Nursery" after our last visit.  

We had always noticed large, female Nile Crocodiles laying on a sandy bank near our site.  This day, we confirmed that they were nesting when we saw that one of the females had moved and there were broken egg shells in the spot she used to be laying.

Shortly after we noticed the broken shells, we saw a huge Nile Monitor run out of the water and up the bank.  We figured that the Nile Monitor must have been munching on the Nile Crocodile eggs.  

Then we crawled down the bank and began observing and watching the area before we began our business.  Of course, our armed Ranger was with us.  All of the sudden, Amanda saw something small pop up out of the water and look at her then go back under.  She figured it was probably a frog or maybe a small Nile Crocodile.  Then I looked down the bank approximately 10 meters from where we were and noticed these little fellas.

There were approximately 30 baby Nile Crocodiles all over the bank!  We packed up our gear, climbed back up the bank and moved downstream so that we wouldn't disturb them.  We were a bit worried how protective the large mother would be if we were near her offspring.  We ended up working downstream of the babies for about two hours and never saw the mother.