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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Swissboy" data-source="post: 3517883" data-attributes="member: 4926">When touring Uganda for birds, most people essentially visit only the western part of the country. And the tours either start by going north first or starting in the southwest. With the visit to the Mabamba wetlands for the Shoebill either added at the onset or at the end. "North" can mean driving up to Murchison Falls NP or only up to Kibale. Sure, there are more options, but the standard tours go about that far.From Switzerland, we flew into Entebbe after having spent a night at Abu Dhabi. That just left time for an easy start with some birding at the Entebbe Botanical Garden. On day two, we did the Mabamba wetlands boat tour. The Mabamba swamp is actually not far from Entebbe by aerial distance. But it takes a relatively long drive by car to get to the boat launch site. Mabamba seems a relatively secure place to actually get the Shoebill. Whether it can always be seen as close as we had it, I don't know. This was definitely my most wanted bird for this trip. So I was very happy that we got it right at the beginning of the tour. And it was great that we were able to spend a rather long time with the bird. First, it seemed to just stand there, almost motionless. Something I remembered from the days when the species could be seen at the Zurich (Switzerland) Zoo. Virtually never was there any great movement when I visited that bird there. So it was great when the Mabamba individual became more and more active, and we were able to just stay there and watch. Eventually, it flew without any coercion from our part. The boat tour also allowed fine observations of many other birds, so this was a great start.On day three, we had a very long drive up north to Murchison Falls NP. About halfway, we had a flat tire. It turned out the tire had a hidden repair on the inside that blew. In the end, that tire was damaged beyond repair, possibly because we had to get the car off the main road first. Some birding was done along the road and Deo pointed out a formerly fine marsh that had just recently been drained and mostly destroyed. So more and more, good birding is restricted to protected areas in Uganda, it seems.Day four brought a fine game drive with the only Giraffes we had on this tour, plus many other mammals including Elephants which we always love to see. Birds included Abyssinian Ground-Hornbills and Rüppell's Vulture, the latter one of my target species. The afternoon boat tour towards the Murchison Falls offered lots of fine observations of both mammals and birds. My favorite was the Rock Pratincole that I just barely managed to photograph on a rock before people stepped onto that rock from the boat for their stupid selfies in front of the still relatively distant falls. My only consolation was that I would not have been able to get that close to the pratincole if it had not been for the intended photo opportunities by the selfie shooters.</blockquote>

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