Each year around the same time the circular great wildebeest migration begins in the Ngorongoro area of the southern Serengeti of Tanzania.
This migration is a natural phenomenon determined by the availability of grazing. It lasts from approximately January to March, when the calving season begins – a time when there is plenty of rain ripened grass available for the 750,000 zebra that precede 1.2 million wildebeest and the following hundreds of thousands of other plains game.
During February the wildebeest spend their time on the short grass plains of the south eastern part of the ecosystem, grazing and giving birth to approximately 500,000 calves within a 2 to 3-week period: a remarkably synchronised event.
Few calves are born ahead of time and of these, hardly any will survive. The main reason for this being that very young calves are more noticeable to predators when mixed with older calves from the previous year, and so are easier prey.
As the rains end in May the animals start moving north west, into the areas around the Grumeti River, where they typically remain until late June. July sees the main migration of wildebeest, zebra and eland heading north, arriving on the Kenyan border late July / August for the remainder of the dry season (the Thomson’s and Grant’s Gazelles move only east/west).
In early November with the start of the short rains the migration starts moving south again, to the short grass plains of the south east, usually arriving in December in plenty of time for calving in February.
Some 250,000 wildebeest die during the journey from Tanzania to Maasai Mara Reserve in lower Kenya, a total of 800 kilometres (500 mi).
Death is usually from thirst, hunger, exhaustion, or predation.The migration is chronicled in the 1994 documentary film, Africa: The Serengeti. The second-largest is the South Sudan animal migration.
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