Baby Rhino Meets The World

The shy baby white rhino stays close to its mum in Kenya

At a certain time and secret place in Kenya, a baby white rhino was born. Its a real cause for celebration when news breaks out of a rhino birth seeing as they are critically endangered. This story however is not about the already well publicized plight of rhinos, i'll add my 2 cents to that story some other day. This story is about a certain moment in time on the life of the baby rhino itself.

Since were the first to ever see this baby white rhino, we wanted to make its first time experience with people a very non intrusive one. We parked our safari vehicle about 200 meter's away leaving plenty of room for mama rhino and her calf to feel completely uninhibited and at ease. As we were a group of experienced wildlife photographers, the vehicle was switched off, HF radio turned down without making any calls about our current location and that's when we brought out the 500mm and 600mm camera lenses.

Watching this little rhino through our telephoto lenses and binoculars, we were able to reach out and capture some great first time photographs as it meandered between the tall grass. Observing this baby for about thirty minutes, we could appreciate the real bond and interaction it had with its mother. We noticed that since it was not accustomed to this big new world, the baby found comfort in the presence of its mom and usually stayed no further than five meter's away from her at all times.

By now 45 minutes had passed and a vehicle showed up. As i am a Kenya Wildlife Service Honorary Game Warden, i had earlier placed a mobile phone call to the Park Senior Warden advising him about our find and the location. Thrilled with the news, he had quickly dispatched a vehicle with rangers and a park scientist to join us in making further observations on this new VIP's arrival.

After about fifteen more minutes of exchanging and noting down scientific information about the mother rhino, we parted ways with the Kenya Wildlife Service team, leaving them to spend the rest of the day with the duo. 

The sheer pleasure of sighting this baby rhino for the first time is indescribable, but even better yet was the quality time we spent peacefully watching, learning and appreciating the two of them interacting.