Birds

Uganda has a tremendous variety of bird life.  The national bird is the Crowned Crane and the first one I saw on June 9 is resident in the French Embassy gardens, where they call her Victoria. Apparently Crowned Cranes are very friendly and Victoria was out there by the gate inspecting the guests and their cars as they arrived for a fundraiser for the Kampala Music School.

At the apartments where I'm living, I wake every morning to the "chook chook" squabbling of Eastern Grey Plantain Eaters (crested head, white bars on the wings and tail tip, and VERY noisy) and the cawing of Pied Crows in the trees outside.

There's a cage with three African grey parrots next to reception. They are quite shy...

There are also lots of butterflies here - small with black and deep violet-blue wings, and sulphur yellow ones; large butterflies with lime green and black patterned wings but thankfully not many flies or mosquitoes.

Marabou storks are very common in Kampala and they roost on the roof of Mulago hospital where I can see them from the outdoor steps leading up to my office.  Marabou eat carrion.

Here's a picture of a marabou stork taken from the top of the Garden City shopping mall.  You can see the Old Kampala Mosque on the hilltop behind.

On June 1, we went for a lab picnic on the shores of Lake Victoria. The air was thick with dragonflies, swarming around you at every step, the sun glinting off their gauzy wings, which have two black bands at the base.  Happily, dragonflies don't settle on you or bite!  I took a video which gives you a sense of the wonderful birdsong (and the black specks are dragonflies)

I saw a sacred ibis picking its way gingerly around a tree, and down on the water's edge was a wealth of species.

Here are yellow billed egrets and little egrets, which have a black bill but yellow toes, plainly visible when they fly away, plus Egyptian geese and spur winged plovers.  On the water are great cormorants - you can see them on the rock in the next picture.

This is a single little egret - notice the black bill

This is a spur winged plover on the left and a black winged stilt on the right

The stilts have pink feet and you can see a whole flock of them in the next picture, flying away.

This is a pied kingfisher, the video starts with him.

I think, by its forked tail and yellow feet, that this is a black kite in flight

June 11: Confirmed that the dark ibises I've seen in my neighborhood are Hadeda Ibis from a close up view on my walk to work this morning through the grounds of Mulago Hospital.

June 19: I've discovered a colony of Black-headed Weavers, also known as Village Weavers, in a tree close to the apartment on Windsor Crescent.  They fly really fast in and out of the tree!  You can see one right in the center of this picture - yellow underbelly, black head and wings.

We've been having heavy rain all week and on June 30th I found this nest washed out of the tree so was able to inspect the woven construction at close quarters.  The nest was heart-shaped with a J-shaped tunnel neatly lined inside with grass and skilfully woven together outside.

On June 23rd I set out on a long walk to find the Kabaka's Lake in Old Kampala, where cattle egrets and weavers are said to be abundant.  Due to misreading the map I never found the lake, but I was happy to find a whole flock of cattle egrets in a tree at the Aga Khan School on Gaddafi Road.  The adults have a yellow crest and patch on their breast during breeding time.

The immature birds have white fluffy crests

July 3: Open-billed stork on the school rooftop - if you look closely you can see the gaps in its beak which are helpful when eating snails

July 7: Today was a bumper bird day. These Rueppell's long-tailed starlings with iridescent blue backs, white eyes and long tails, were singing loudly on Lower Kololo Road, and I also spotted a marabou stork and a yellow-billed egret on the airstrip pecking the grass for insects.  I saw some kind of black egret picking over a pile of trash later in the day - it's not in my bird book.

The birding highlight of the day was sighting these two brown parrots on Windsor Crescent - they are actually green underneath with yellow throats.  I am realizing that the trees here are full of birds - I've only noticed the ones that have drawn my attention by singing or flying in and out of the branches.  Consequently I now walk around looking up into the trees all the time - much to the amusement of security guards outside the compounds I walk past.  I just have to hope I don't fall down an open drain cover when I'm not watching where I put my feet.

Back at the apartments I spotted three variable sunbirds in one of the New Zealand Christmas trees and a scarlet chested sunbird singing at the top of a pine tree.

July 12: Here are pictures of two mystery birds that I've been unable to identify.  The first I'm convincing myself is a woodland kingfisher (or possibly a striped kingfisher - the jury is still out) - there are two that I see perched on the powerlines most days on the walk to or from work.  But they only have a blue bar on the wing rather than all over the back and I can't see if the beak is red.  Or is it a Tropical Boubou - but do they have any blue at all?

I've seen two pairs of the second mystery birds on two occasions this week - they are black, perhaps with a crest on the head, and brilliant red underneath on the belly and possibly also under the wings.  Is it a mocking chat perhaps? (No, probably a Hartlaub's turaco)

July 14: added a couple more water birds to my twitcher list during a lunchtime visit to the Haven, a beautiful lodge on the Nile about 10km north of Jinja.  The first one's a cormorant that seems to have caught a fish.

 The second one's an African Fish Eagle that didn't appear to be so lucky.