Blue Eyed Birder: Uganda for Bird's Wildlife & Nature

There were some very strange noises during the night emanating from the scrub outside my room at Rwakobo Rock Lodge and I can only assume that they were some very strident species of cicada – almost fell out of bed when it started up! The Black Shouldered Nightjars were going well when I ambled outside in the dark at 6am and one came up off the path while the Square Tailed Nightjars were still going strong too.

We sat there with a cup of coffee and listened to the place wake up with the Olive Baboons grumpily chatting to their neighbours and the Ruppell’s Starling, Doves and Bulbuls getting the bird proceedings going. Tropical Boubou and Brown-throated Wattle-eye joined but it was so foggy that there was actually nothing to see.

Breakfast and then on the road for several hours spent between the lodge and main Mburo reserve gate and the track way back to the main road. The rarer Barbets and Brown Chested Lapwings were our targets once again but we did not pick up either but we had a great session in the warmest morning so far once the murk burnt off.

Down at the gate we had a bare tree where African Paradise Flycatcher, Black Scimitarbill, both Mousebird species, Lesser Weavers, Bru-bru, Green Winged Pytillia and Spot-flanked Barbets were congregating. There was no foliage and they appeared to be drinking from moisture within the lichen covered branches. A strange looking Grey Capped Warbler sang lustily from a tree top and Red-faced Crombec was also briefly seen in the same tree.

Grey Capped Warbler

Speckled Mousebird in dangle mode

Spot-flanked Barbet

The Weaver colony was in full flow with Lesser Masked, Village and Red-headed and Brown Backed Scrub Robins put on a show along with an Orange Breasted Bush-shrike and some dangling Red-headed Lovebirds.

Red-headed Lovebirds

Village Weaver

The dry scrub held Crowned and African Wattled Lapwings and two Water Thick-knees along with Pale Flycatchers, African and Plain-backed Pipits, Grey Backed Fiscals, a single male Orange-backed Weaver (which would prove fortuitous as the Entebbe birds had moved on by our last day), Fawn Breasted Waxbills with red Edam bills and we even had two Pygmy Kingfishers whizz by. Little ginger Dwarf Mongooses were seen at several termite mound homes and a Bushbuck and Stripe Flanked Ground Squirrel were two new mammals although I am not sure we quite needed the intimate view of a Vervet’s Velvety Turquoise Testicles.

Trilling Cisticola

Brown Backed Scrub Robin

Water Thick-knee

Water Thick-knees

Brown Backed Scrub Robin & Brimstone Canary

Plain-backed Pipit

White-browed Robin-chat

Emerald Spotted Wood-Dove

Pale Flycatcher

Fawn-bellied Waxbill

Vervet Minkey

Stripe Flanked Ground Squirrel

Bushbuck

Burchell's Zebra

Vervet’s Velvety Turquoise Testicles.

Ankole

Dwarf Mongoose - don't let the little smile fool you

Dwarf Mongoose

Paul searching for odd Lapwings

A Skimmer of some sort

Grey Rumped Swallows joined Angolan, Barn, Red-rumped and White-headed Saw-wings and a couple of White-rumped and Scarce Swifts before we moved on. The bulk of the day was spent travelling through a landscape altered by man (much like our own) with Eucalyptus and Pine plantations and Bananas in all directions but we made a few little roadside stops adding the smaller Northern Fiscal, African Stonechats, Lanner, Wire-tailed Swallow and huge billed White-necked Ravens which we saw well at a coffee stop with a big view.

How could we not stop when these Grey Crowned Cranes were next to the road?

Look at the bills on these White-necked Ravens

White-necked Ravens

There were quite a few other raptors with Harrier-Hawks, Grey Kestrels, Fish Eagles, Long-crested Eagles and Augur Buzzards and a good selection of Herons, Storks and Ibis. White-faced Whistling and Yellow-billed Ducks were seen on a roadside pool.

Grey Kestrel

Eventually we turned off onto the Bwindi Rauhija road – 26km of track that took almost until dark to traverse and after weaving around a procession of joyously happy school children on their way home from school we entered the reserve proper and found ourselves within jungle with towering trees and dangling lianas and were ‘forced’ by Paul to make several stops along the way.

The level of deforestation and steepness of the cultivated zone is astonishing but as Paul said - it is either clear and farm or have nothing to eat. The ones in these pictures are gentle slopes.

It was in the at the deep end stuff once again with so many Albertine Rift species moving through the trees around us and we quickly notched up ugly (sorry) Grey Throated Barbets, Western Green and Yellow-rumped Tinkerbirds, Grey and Petit’s Cuckoo-shrikes, a gaudy Mountain Oriole, White-tailed Blue, African Dusky and White-eyed Slaty Flycatchers (which does not have white-eyes but spectacles), Yellow-whiskered Greenbuls, Mountain Masked, Black-throated and Chestnut-throated Apalis, olive Mountain White-eyes, a female Sharpe’s Starling, shouty Cinnamon Bracken Warbler, Blue-headed, Northern Double Collared, Regal and Collared Sunbirds, blue, yellow and rufous Brown Capped Weavers, Yellow-bellied Waxbills and Stripe Breasted Tits – and breath. It was a time for bins over cameras.

Yellow-bellied Waxbills

Yellow-bellied Waxbill

A huge Forest Bee nest

Cinnamon Bee-eater

Grey-throated Barbet

Mountain Oriole - Angie Merrick

lots of Butterflies were in the road - Angie Merrick

African Olive Pigeons clattered through and Great Blue Turacos glided across the road while Rock Martins and Black Saw-wings joined Cinnamon-chested Bee-eaters. We eventually made it to the Bakiga Hotel passing Black & White Colobus and L’Hoest’s Monkeys on the way before a late dinner with moths for company and an eventual crawl into bed in preparation of our Gorilla trek the next morning.