Birds and Reptiles

Swooping low over the long grass plains, a black-crested Snake Eagle flares and then drops like a stone, talons extended. Seconds later it vaults into the air, carrying a long brown grass snake. It climbs slowly and passes only a few meters over our safari vehicle, wriggling snake and all, causing all of us to duck by reflex.
We have just seen two of the Serengeti's often overlooked but charismatic groups; the "Flyers and the Crawlers".

Birds are one of the most diverse life forms on earth. They fill a wide variety of ecological roles. They are herbivores, insectivores, predators and scavengers. They range from the tiny "Beautiful Sunbird" that sometimes comes to investigate a particularly bright Hawaiian shirt, to the enormous ostrich with its red legs and dramatic mating dance, and everything in between. Serengeti hosts more than 540 bird species of residents and migrants, some of which you may recognize such as the dramatic "Secretary bird", the austere "African Fish Eagle", the "Fisher's Lovebird" or the countless vultures.

Serengeti contains a huge variety and number of animals that creep, crawl, and slither. Most of these lizards, skinks, and snakes feed on the abundant insects and rodents in the grass, while others specialize on birds eggs and pythons can consume animals as large as gazelles. Some crawlers are herbivores themselves such as the leopard or hinge-backed tortoises. Not all crawlers are small, however; the giant catfish of the Mara and Grumeti Rivers will pull themselves through the mud from pool to pool and can weight up to 30 pounds, while the very active monitor lizard lives in reeds and bushes and grows to a meter and a half long. The king of the crawlers, at over 1000 pounds and sometimes in excess of 5 meters long, is the massive fresh water crocodiles of Serengeti, who will happily eat a whole wildebeest for dinner and can live for a over a hundred years (making the worst possible houseguest imaginable).

 
Insects

The first thing that many visitors to Serengeti notice is the apparently low numbers of insects. Many had heard stories and are nervous of biting or creepy-crawly things in Africa. In fact, while the numbers of biting and stinging insects is much lower than North America or Europe, the diversity and number of insects is phenomenally higher.
The Serengeti may not be filled with mosquitoes and black-flies, but the numbers of plant eaters, eaters of the plant eaters, and eaters of the eaters of the plant eaters is amazing.