Untamed Land

Untamed Land
Untamed Land

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Gary Photographs Murchison

Murchison Falls National Park lies along the banks of the Nile River. It was the last, and best place that we explored on our Uganda adventure. It was also the hottest place we visited. Gary shot the photo above from our campground just outside the park's boundaries.
There were elephants that seemed to hang out all day just across the river from out camp. Later we crossed the river on a ferry and stayed even closer to the elephants. We had some stressful encounters with them in the days to come.
We took two boat tours along the banks of the river to see the abundant wildlife from up close.
We saw these Rock Pratincoles just below the falls. They are an unusual species of bird.

The park proper looks like typical African Savannah habitat. We were amazed by the abundance of wildlife in the grasslands. Like these Uganda Kobs.
Murchison is the only place that we saw the odd, Jackson's Hartebeest.
These incredible beauties were abundant in Murhison. It is the only place where we saw giraffes. They are very photogenic.

Oribis are very abundant and petit. They were also unique to Murchison, at least on our trip.
The males have short, but sharp horns.

Both Gary and I got similar photos of this particular group of Cape Buffalo. I like this angle. We were in a small roadcut, and the buffalo were just above us.

The noble beast.
These impressive, and slightly grotesque ground hornbills were quite common in Murchison.

This Yellow-billed Kite was actually in Semliki Toro, but I forgot to include it there. It was perched about 8 ft off the ground in a tree growing about 3ft off the road. We pulled alongside and shot many photos. The bird never flew. Yellow-billed Kites are a form of the widespread, Black Kite.
We only saw this one Woodchat Shrike on the trip. It breeds in europe.

We also saw only one or two of these wintering shrikes.

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