From Toro-semliki to the Budongo Forest

Maribou Storks confidently strut around villages and big cities throughout Uganda. This bird was in the village next to the Toro-semliki Headquarters on the shore of Lake Albert.

This guy was in the tree next to my banda.

This was me after a month of roughing it in the bush.

Another of my target birds for Uganda was Grey-crowned Crane. We saw many of them, and some were quite tame. These birds were just outside the picnic area near our bandas.

A Black-headed Heron stood vigil in a tree over my outdoor shower in Toro-semliki. That is if you can call pouring a bucket of water over your head a shower. I wont even describe the horrors of the pit toilets.

The nature reserves and national parks of Uganda require visitors to hire an armed guard to accompany them on outings into the bush. That is because on the dangerous animals and nefarious people that you might encounter. All of our guards were excellent birders and they were genuinely enthusiastic about helping us find good wildlife.

In the photo above Moses stands beside Gary as they admire some Little Bee-eaters. We often slipped away into the parks without our minders to save a little money. Mostly we got away with it. A guilty pleasure.

This Yellow-billed Kite perched right next to the road and allowed us to take all the photos we could desire.

A Brown Snake Eagle in bad light.

A Red-headed Weaver also in the same bad light.

The Eastern Grey Plantain-eater is very similar to a go-away bird. We saw them all over Uganda. They are vocal and sound very much like Laughing Kookaburas.

We got to watch a pair of Cardinal Woodpeckers excavate a nest hole. The male did almost all of the work.

We never got into the Budongo Forest proper because the guard at the gate would not let us pass through without a guide. We would have had to drive for over an hour out of the way to get a guide and then bring him back at the end of the day. That would have left us in the same predicament of not being able to drive through the forest without a guide. We drove around it instead.

This White-thighed Hornbill was nearby. It has a very limited range within the country.

Another White-thighed Hornbill.

A Crowned Hornbill.

We did get to pass through the periphery of the famous Budongo forest. We saw lots of hornbills, some good cuckoos, and many other birds. We heard Chimpanzees and saw a new primate species, Blue Monkeys. They did not stick around long enough for photos.

The next few posts will be about our last, and best area in Uganda, Murchison Falls National Park.

Stalking Chimps

Our long day started well before dawn as we ate breakfast by flashlight, (torchlight) while being swarmed by clouds of lake flies. They covered our cereal and there were so many that we did'nt bother to remove them.

Once on the road to the Chimpanzee Research Station we got to see a Blotched, (Large-spotted) Genet cross the road in front of us. Our third genet for the trip.

We were very tempted to stop often to watch birds once the sun came up but we needed to reach our destination by 7:00am.

Some birds were too good to pass up. This White-browed Coucal was soaking wet because it rained hard just before dawn.

My fourth new species of kingfisher for the trip, The wonderful, Grey-headed Kingfisher. The other three were, African Pygmy, Striped, and Shining Blue Kingfisher. This is another kingfisher that does not associate with water or catch fish.

A beautiful male, Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu.

Toro-semliki was the first place where we saw the impressive Abyssinian Ground Hornbill.

It was also where we first saw Little Bee-eaters on this trip.

We had been seeing the very striking, Black-headed Gonoleks all along. They sing a very interesting duet where the male opens with a pleasant musical refrain and the female finishes it with a harsh retort. That's an assumtion on my part. It may be the female who starts the duet.

The sexes are similar and they prefer to hide in thick scrub.

We finally made it to a ranger station and picked up our guide/ guard, Elimoshe in front of his banda.

We still had several kilometers to drive before we reached the research station. There were some Black and White Colobus Monkeys nearby.

B&W Colobus tend to be slow moving leaf eaters that are a favorite prey item of Chimpanzees. The colobus can move at lightening speed when they have to.

After we arrived at the research station, which is operated and funded by an American ivy league university, I forget which one, we entered a thickly forested ravine behind it. Elimoshe explained that we would need to walk anywhere between one, and eight kilometers before we would find the chimps.

The trail was steep and muddy, but we were in luck and heard chimps calling in the distance. We crept along slowly and silently, stopping often to look and listen.

After 15 or 20 minutes Elimoshe motioned for us to stop and crouch down. Then he pointed up into a tree nearby. I could see nothing in the thick foliage. We sat down and eventually I started to make out some dark shapes only about 30 feet, (10 meters) away.

The Chimpanzees were silently watching us. I was impressed by how big they were. They were very close to us.

There were three chimps in all. Eventually they relaxed and returned to their search for small fruits in the tree. We watched them for about an hour but the chimps kept well hidden behind branches for most of the time. Occasionally one of them would peek out at us.

One of the chimps was a big male. When he decided to move on to a new tree, he became agitated with our presense. He started shouting and snapping off limbs, some of which were about three inches in diameter. He was so close to us and so strong. Elimoshe was visibly nervous.

All three chimps left the tree and moved away without incident. I was relieved. It was quite an experience.

Semliki and Toro-Semliki

A magnificent male Blue-headed Agama on the outside wall of my room in Semliki NP.
The Semliki forest is the only lowland tropical rainforest in all of East Africa. It is an extension of the large Ituri Forest in the DRC. There are about 50 bird species there that occur nowhere else in East Africa. Five species of hornbill cannot be seen in Uganda except in semliki. There are also many primate species and other mammals that can only be seen there including Forest Elephant and Forest Buffalo.
While planning out our trip, Semliki was my number one destination. I actually wanted to skip Bwindi in order to have more time in Semliki. Gary and Tom had other ideas so I compromised. Tom did'nt really think Semliki was worth the trouble of going so far out of our way to visit.

The forest looks like any other of the forests that we visited, and like many forests, it is difficult to see anything in the thick vegetation. Tom was closer to being right about Semliki than I was. We did see three of the five hornbills. The large Black-casqued Wattled Hornbill, Piping Hornbill, and the rare White-crested Hornbill. We also got Red-tailed Ant Thrush and a few other goodies but FEW is the operative word.

I did'nt get photos of much at all in Semliki but the agama is worth a close-up. They are large and remind me of extra colorful Bearded Dargons.

There were a few interesting butterflies in the forest. The most colorful would not sit still for a portrait.

Toro-semliki Wildlife Reserve lies to the Northeast of Semliki NP. It is Uganda's oldest protected area, and it is where we saw some Black-bellied Bustards. It has plenty of wildlife but not like it used to have before Idi Amin and his stupid war with Tanzania.

If you remember your history, Idi Amin was a mega-maniacal dictator who invaded Tanzania and got invaded by Tanzania in return. The Ugandan and Tanzanian troops looted and nearly destroyed all of Uganda's protected areas back in the 1970's. They have still not fully recovered today.  The movie, The Last King of Scotland is all about Idi Amin.

Anyway Toro-semliki is mostly savannah habitat that borders Lake Albert. We got a new primate there, Tantalus Monkey. I think this one is taking it's first evolutionary steps toward bi-pedalism. (joke).

We pretty much had the whole reserve to ourselves. All of the reserve staff bent over backward to make our stay as pleasant as possible. It is another great place. Above are a Black-billed Barbet, (left) and Rueppel's Long-tailed Starling. The starling looks nearly identical to a North American Grackle.

The reserve headquarters are right next to a noisy village on the shores of Lake Albert. The area is loaded with birds. The village survives on fishing and yet when we went into the village for dinner, there were no fish at all. We ate goat stew instead, (much better than fish in my opinion).

We stayed in these rustic bandas that were very inexpensive but lacked electricity or running water. The reserve staff povided us with lanterns at night but warned us to leave them well away from us after about 8:00pm. That was when the lake flies swarmed in their mighty hordes. We set a lantern on the ground outside a banda for about an hour. In the morning there was a pile of dead flies, four inches deep, in a radius of ten feet around the lantern. Possibly as much as a million dead flies. The birds in the photo are Maribou Storks.

There were many wintering shorebirds at the lakeshore like this Common Greenshank.

The winter plummaged Ruff looks like a different species than the breeding male.

An African Open-billed Stork.

Little Egret, Common Greenshank, and a mis-labelled Common Ringed Plover.

A Whiskered Tern makes a quick turn to zero in on a small fish.

Black-winged Stilts.

Stat tuned for an exciting account of our trek to find Chimpanzees in Toro-semliki.

Bigodi Wetlands Sanctuary

 I guess I get an A for creative sign photography considering the fact that the sign I was trying to photograph was the sign that is cut off on the far left of the photo. I was distracted by the villagers passing by along the road.

The Bigodi Wetlands are nearby the more famous Kibale Forest, north of Queen Elizabeth NP. Kibale Forest is the best place in Uganda to see Chimpanzees.

Bigodi is a small but enterprizing village that set up the Bigodi Wetlands Sanctuary on the outskirts of town. It's not much to look at, and is hardly a wetland at all. It does have an abundance of birds and monkeys.

In the photo above, Gary walks along the road toward the sanctuary with our expert guide Alex. We camped out at a wonderful resort near the village that was managed by Hillary, who trained Alex. We loved the area.

Even before we got to the sanctuary itself we started seeing good things like a pair of Great Blue Turacos eating palm fruits right next to the busy road, (busy with foot traffic not automobile traffic).

This bird, as much as anything else was responsible for me wanting to come to Uganda when I read that it was fairly easy to see in the country. There were half a dozen other birds I wanted to see just as much.

Turacos and their close relatives, Go-away birds are restricted to the African Continent. I was pleased to see Knyshna and Purple-crested Turacos in South Africa, and Ross's, Black-billed, White-crested, and Great Blue Turacos in Uganda.

Another bird that I seriously hoped to see in Uganda was the African Grey Parrot.

African Grey Parrots are Africa's largest parrot. We saw several of them eating small fruits in a tree at the edge of Bigodi Wetlands. We laid back on a hillside next to the tree and observed the feeding behavior of the parrots. What a priveledge it was to see these birds in their natural state.

We saw two new species of monkeys in the wetlands. This is a Central African Red Colobus. The other species were some Grey-cheeked Mangabeys but I got really bad photos of them.

Here is an Olive Baboon trying to look cool from his elevated perch.

The other monkey species we saw in the wetlands were B&W Colobus, and these Red-tailed Monkeys. Five species of monkeys in one small area is pretty impressive as far as I'm concerned. We saw many new birds in Bigodi as well.

We asked about seeing Chimpanzees in the nearby Kibale Forest. They wanted to charge us $50.oo US for the car, $30.oo per person entry fee, plus $90.oo per person for a chimp permit. Forget it. We headed further Northwest to Semliki Forest on the border with the DRC. More about Chimpanzees later.