Royal Mile – Uganda

I’m not sure how the name “Royal Mile” came to be, but Budongo Forest has been referred to by that moniker for years. Maybe the forest has a “royal” feel to it, but it’s definitely longer than a mile. We birded a long, straight road that extends almost as far as the eye can see with tall trees and a thick understory on either side. It’s a stunning forest patch chalk full of wildlife, including several special birds and one of the most fascinating primates of all, Chimpanzee.
Our early morning in the forest, what we assumed would be the best part of the day, was somewhat slow in terms of bird activity save for an extremely showy Pale-breasted Illadopsis. Our late-morning/afternoon however was rather exciting and we found target after target. We came to Royal Mile with three main targets in mind: Ituri Batis, Willcock’s Honeyguide, and Nahan’s Francolin, three birds which are known to be difficult to see, especially the secretive and often quiet francolin. In fact our guide was with four birders from the UK just the day prior to us and they missed all three! We knew these birds could be tricky so we had two days budgeted in the schedule for this location.
As we walked the wide, flat road that afternoon we came upon a very vocal Willcock’s Honeyguide and not five minutes later heard the sounds of several Nahan’s Francolins! We were already in a perfect location and managed to climb onto a small side trail, crouch down, and watch as one flock of francolins came into another groups’ territory. A small fight ensued and we had great views of this secretive species for several minutes before the trespassing birds went back to their own territory. In total, we had twelve partridges! And then, as we walked back out, we managed to find two of the canopy-loving Ituri Batises! Even though they stayed high in the trees we managed great views, photos, and audio recordings.

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I joked that such good luck finding these difficult targets was to make up for the miserable experience we had the night prior. We had arrived in the evening and met Raymond, our mandatory guide, along with the forest manager, Ronald, and were given permission to sleep inside the forest. The gate guard was not at his post when we were let in and therefore was unaware we were given permission to be inside. After dark he came over to where we were eating dinner and made a big raucous. Unfortunately he didn’t speak any English, nor could he read Swahili from Google translate, so we couldn’t explain to him that we were given permission and paid both an entrance and a camping fee to be there. He wanted us out of the forest and said we were not to be inside. (Later we found out he wasn’t at his post because he has a habit of leaving and getting drunk.) Long story short, at 11pm, after our tents were all set up and we had crawled inside to sleep for the night, we were removed from the forest and forced to camp next to the gate guard’s shack.
But like I said, our good fortune the following day more than made up for the interesting night! And with all those targets accounted for in one afternoon we decided to leave a day ahead of schedule!