On Sunday evening on a drive into the Selenkay Conservancy from the Porini Amboseli Camp, one of our regular guests, Pesh Framjee, noticed that a female in the EB elephant family was very pregnant.
This is the elephant family that was led by the matriarch Echo until her death six years ago and they became famous through four films made by Cynthia Moss and Martyn Colbeck for the BBC between 1990 and 2009. They have taken up residence in Selenkay Conservancy and seem to like staying in the area near our camp.
Then in the early hours of the following morning, Monday 15th February, before dawn there was a lot of noise from the elephants, with much trumpeting and rumbling.
At daybreak, Pesh Framjee set out with our guides Wilson and Dennis to walk to the viewing platform by the water hole behind the camp.
Just outside the camp they saw the signs of the afterbirth and so they drove slowly in the camp vehicle up to the elephant family where they saw a very small baby with the umbilical cord still hanging from it – perhaps an hour old – desperately trying to find a nipple to suckle.
Pesh writes: “ The mother (Emma) seemed very nonchalant. I have seen sister and aunts helping out but was surprised to see a young male really trying to help the baby find a breast – pushing and guiding the baby with his trunk and even using his hind leg gently to nudge and raise it towards a teat.”
Pesh continues: “After the rest of the herd moved on he stayed with Emma and her new baby. They were incredibly trusting walking close up to the vehicle. The fact that the birthing happened virtually in the Porini Amboseli Camp shows how safe they feel there. There was a lot of trumpeting in the night and I had thought that maybe they had been disturbed by a lion nearby as we had heard one roaring earlier but it turns out that it must have been their excitement at the birth. The baby was born within 20 yards of the camp and it was a privilege to see her so soon after being born.”
Please click through for more information:
Elephant movements – tracking collared elephants from Amboseli National Park to Selenkay Conservancy and tracking lions and cheetahs in Ol Kinyei in the Mara.
Selenkay Conservancy and Porini Amboseli Camp