birds and other wildlife in Uganda

Back from a three week holiday in Uganda, with so much work to do and so little time that I thought the easiest way to describe this trip was through a little photo essay.

Firstly, a few birds, starting with the shoebill stork.  We took a boat trip in the Mubama Swamp looking for this amazing creature - 1.2 metres tall and looking like something out of the era of the dinosaurs.















& then (left) the beautiful and delicate red-throated bee-eater.




& another bee-eater:










& to finish the birding section, a great blue turaco.  I've seen this bird before in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but there they are shy birds up in the canopy.  In Uganda they were flying around the hotel gardens:

Now on to the mammals.  I opted out of the expensive gorilla trek, having seen these amazing creatures a few years back in Rwanda and not wanting to pay a further $600.  However I did get to join a chimpanzee trek.  We were walking through the forest early in the morning in a good mood having just seen the beautiful and rare green-breasted pitta, when a male chimpanzee came down out of a tree.  We followed, stumbling into roots and branches in our efforts to keep up.

He moved fast, with breaks to sit and look up and the trees, and then when he saw what he wanted (just fresh leaves on a particular type of tree) he climbed up and ate.  He was difficult to photograph as he was moving so fast and the forest was dark, but here is one of him staring up at the trees.







There were plenty of other mammals. Unfortunately I could not get a photo of the serval cat, but here are a few of the more common larger mammals:

The wildlife was in many cases not hard to find.  At one hotel the warthogs and mongooses were literally right outside the hotel room doors:











& to finish, this is not a good photo at all, but the baby warthog cannot be more than a day old, so very cute: