SHOEBILL!!! (And Mabira Forest) – Uganda

Birds are modern day dinosaurs. There is an uncanny resemblance when looking closely at those scaly feet and upright posture. Scientists think many dinosaurs may even have had feathers.
But some birds just look more like dinosaurs than others. Some birds clearly ARE dinosaurs. And some birds are a highlight of any trip into the freshwater swamps of central tropical Africa. Shoebill, one of the most distinct and iconic birds in all of Africa, is a modern day dinosaur.
Originally we weren’t going to have time to visit Mabamba Swamp of Uganda, but with new COVID implications, our trip was thrown slightly off its axel and we had a bit more time in Entebbe before our friend Julien arrived.
We went directly to the swamp and managed to easily coordinate a boat ride out into it. Most tourists do not really care to see birds but in the case of Shoebill, one doesn’t need to be a birder to want to see it. This is the kind of bird everyone wants to see. It was early morning as we headed out into the swamp in search of our target and it was still early morning as we watched a single male Shoebill stand as perfectly still as a statue. We were able to get close and just carefully watch to our heart’s content. And then it was off to another portion of the swamp to find Weyn’s Weaver, which we found singing in a ficus in the middle of a reedy section. It was a great morning and if you’re on Instagram I did an entire story about it. @budgetbirders

Prior to coming for Shoebill we made a stop at Mabira Forest Reserve in far Eastern Uganda, close to the Kenya border. Mabira Forest Reserve isn’t much of a “reserve” in the sense of preserving and protecting the forest. During our visit we witnessed countless trees chopped down and left for dead. It’s disappointing to pay entrance fees and witness first-hand the sad truth — that it’s not helping to save the forest. Perhaps the COVID lockdowns and lack of income have made things worse than normal or perhaps this is the way it always is. I shouldn’t let the destruction get to me, but sometimes it does and I think I would have liked Mabira a lot more if there wasn’t evidence everywhere that the large trees were being heavily logged. That said, I did really like it here if I could look beyond the trash and destruction. Truth be told, there was still plenty of habitat left for our birding purposes (but whether or not that will still be true 20 years from now is up to Uganda.)
Much of what Mabira had to offer bird-wise were species Ross and I just saw in Kenya’s Kakamega Forest. Aside from Forest Wood-hoopoe we didn’t have a single other target but the whole forest was quite birdy. Surely the biggest highlight of our time was finding not one but TWO Tree Pangolins!! Pangolins are heavily trafficked because their scales are thought to cure a variety of illnesses in traditional Chinese medicine and as a result have become extremely rare. These poor defenseless creatures are on the verge of extinction so seeing two of them was an unexpected surprise! Uganda was off to a great start!

This birding occurred on June 3-4, 2021.