Queen Elizabeth national park and Kibale
Finally I got to writing the next long, very long overdue update of my Uganda trip. And if you're just here for the species list: scroll down, as this is gonna be a long story.
Everyone still remembers where we were? No? Well, my last update was about the gorillas in Bwindi National Park, and the next day we drove from Lake Mutanda to the Ishasha Sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park. This sector is quite isolated from the more central zones of the park and much less visited. Ishasha is most famous for its tree-climbing lions.
Our lodge here was rather nice and in the very short time we spent there it was quite productive for birds as well. During a short 20 minute walk I spotted red-billed hornbill, woodland kingfisher, a white-backed vulture in the sky and a black-headed gonolek, among others. We only had one game drive here and we left off immediately in search of the big cats. What stood out to me most during this game drive was how much of the park had burned down in forest fires. Basically the first half an hour of the game drive was just driving through a pretty depressing, almost endless, ‘dead zone’. But things cleared up after this area, and I actually loved the open, pretty savannas in the rest of the park. In terms of birdlife, the drive was rather quiet (in terms of new species, we only saw griffon vulture, African openbill, olive bee-eater and black crake), but the enormous herds of Uganda kob and topi made up for that. We also saw our first hippos, African buffaloes, black-and-white colobus and African savannah elephants (we had only seen the forest ellie in Bwindi up to that point) here. But that was not the main point of the drive: after all we had come to see those damn tree-climbing lions. No luck with them sadly, but we did get a much nicer surprise. The very knowledgeable ranger that came with us in our car spotted a beautiful leopard who was eating a kob. A brilliant sight indeed, and this easily made up for the missed lions.
The following morning we drove to the ‘main sectors’ of Queen Elizabeth national park. On the way we drove through the park for the largest part of the way, although these were obviously some of the less wildlife-rich areas. The best birdy find was the only bateleur of the whole trip, but I was even more thrilled to spot a blue monkey in the Maramagambo forest section of the park. In the afternoon we did a game drive in the Kasenyi plains section of the park. The drive started very quiet again, but after some time the animals started tickling in. I really liked to see our first black-bellied bustard, a species we would see all the time in Murchison Falls and Kidepo later in the trip. Other nice finds were a goliath heron, a very quick troop of banded mongoose, and a very pretty knob-billed duck. And in the final couple of minutes of the drive we found a fantastic troop of lions. We would see lions again during the trip, but this was probably my favourite sighting of them as they were extremely close to our car (some even seemed curious for it) and it was a very large, active troop of lions. A brilliant way to end our game drive!
The day after we did a morning drive in the Kasenyi sector. This time, it was a bit more quiet in terms of mammals, although we did have nice light for photography for once and we probably had our best elephant sighting of the entire trip. To my delight, the birds were quite a bit more productive here than during yesterdays drive. The number of spur-winged and crowned lapwings were truly overwhelming, but the yellow-throated longclaw we saw was probably the highlight of the morning for me. We had a very tasty lunch at the Queen Elizabeth Bush Lodge (not our own accommodation but our guide Sam thought we would like to have lunch there as they have a nice view… and right he was!). After lunch I did a little walk along their trails, as the view on the Kazinga Channel from their terrain are fantastic. The Kazinga Channel is the connecting channel between Lake George and Lake Edward and it is the main waterway in the park, and therefore it is frequented by animals: From here, I could spot many elephants, warthogs and hippos. But my eye fell on a group of rather strange warthogs. But they were, in fact, not really warthogs: I quickly realized I was looking at a family group of giant forest hogs! I could not believe my luck and I got really excited by this, which rather amused my parents and the Belgian group of tourists that were also having lunch at the restaurant who thought I had seen something as impressive as a lion or leopard when they saw me return so enthusiastically from my short walk…
In the afternoon we had planned a boat tour on the Kazinga Channel. On our way there we got another lion sighting, but unfortunately this was not an enjoyable one. The lion we saw had an enormous wound on his paw and looked like he would not be living for long. Sam got a little upset as he thought the lion had probably stepped into an illegal poaching snare. We decide to leave the poor animal alone quickly and drove on to the boat launching point. This boat tour was one of my favorite activities of the whole trip: The numbers of animals are absolutely unbelievable. It seemed like every 10 meters of shore had its own pied kingfisher and hippo. But not only the numbers were impressive, the diversity of species was great too. Some new ones include black winged stint, African fish eagle and a colony of ‘skimming’ African skimmers. And we saw giant forest hogs once again, this time even closer! I was also hugely impressed by the enormous group of pink-backed pelicans that was actually curiously close to the local village. So all in all, I really enjoyed Queen Elizabeth.
The next day, we drove on to the rainforests of Kibale National park. I was impressed by the sheer number of long-crested eagles that were soaring above the forest of the National park that could be seen from our accommodation. We spent the rest of this day at leisure, but of course I went out for some birding again. I found many, many sunbirds. The males were easy to identify, I saw olive bellied sunbird and good numbers of bronze sunbirds. However, female sunbirds are an absolute ID nightmare: I am pretty sure I saw a bronze sunbird female but of the others I photographed I had no idea. So if anyone’s into ID’ing female sunbirds… give me a call. I also saw some red-billed quelea but for the rest it was pretty quiet on the grounds (apart from the always omnipresent speckled mousebirds, common bulbuls and grey plantain eaters).
But the main reason we had come to Kibale were of course the chimpanzees. The chimps can be tracked here with high reliability (about 95% our guide said). So we were very hopeful when we started walking in the forest, but our nerves soon started to increase when we were walking in the forest. Our guide, Benson, was a very nice guy who actually seemed to like to tell us some things about the forest. This was quite different with the gorilla trekking, where the guides did really want to get us to the apes as soon as possible, but given the more lengthy and exhaustive nature of that tracking I think it is quite understandable. Benson even tried to find me a green-breasted pitta (a Kibale specialty). The bird did respond to the call he played from his phone but sadly it did not show himself. It was very quiet in terms of animal life in the forest, we saw some red-tailed monkeys in the canopy and heard some birds calling but never saw any. We had to trek for quite long (+- 3 hours, average is about 1-2 hours but Benson stopping quite often also took us some time) when Benson gave us the signal that we were getting close to the chimps, and we had to mask up. At first, I was slightly disappointed as all the chimpanzees seemed to be high up in the canopy, where getting good looks or photographic opportunities is almost impossible. However, Benson soon led us away from the tree-chimps we were looking at and soon I saw the first chimp on the ground. It was very relaxed and gave us splendid looks for a minute or so, after which it walked away, followed by 10 chimp-trackers (who obviously travelled in a slightly less gracious and noiseless way). I really enjoyed following the chimp through the thick jungle, but after a while we lost him, so we returned to the chimps in the trees that we had been looking at before. A moment later, my dad turned around and was completely flabbergasted to see that another chimp was standing literally 3 meters behind him. Who knows how long it might have been there, everybody was so busy looking at the chimps in the trees that no one had seen it. This chimp was even more relaxed and seemed to pose for our cameras with this incredibly expressive look on its face that only apes can have. I was stunned, but after about 5 minutes the whole forest started shaking: all the chimps were coming down at once! This was probably one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. I had no idea where to look as the chimps were coming down absolutely everywhere, and there turned out to be many many more of them in the trees than we thought there were. The forest was completely alive with their fantastic calls. Total chimp-chaos followed, with individuals walking in all directions until they eventually all disappeared into the jungle, travelling way too quickly for us slow humans to follow. Needless to say, we were all pretty elated after this!
But the day was not over yet, as we had a walk in the Bigodi Swamp next to the national park planned for the afternoon. This small, community-managed reserve is supposed be a good place to spot many birds and monkeys. You walk along and through the swamp over wooden boardwalks, and you pretty much see the entire reserve in a very short time period. On our way to Bigodi from the lodge we got a very nice surprise: a baboon crossed the road. This is very common in Uganda so we were not that thrilled. But there was something weird about this baboon: it was, in fact, not a baboon, but a young chimp! Sam slammed on the brakes when he realized this (which was just a fraction of a second before I screamed: chimp!). Even though we had seen the chimps much better this morning, we really loved the element of surprise in this sighting. During the swamp walk, we indeed spotted huge amounts of monkeys. We had seen red-tailed monkey, black-and-white colobus and olive baboons before, but we also spotted groups of Ugandan red colobus and grey-cheeked mangabey. The number of different bird species was perhaps a little bit disappointing, but I was more than happy with some good looks at 2 spectacular great blue turaco and black-and-white casqued hornbill. We also saw little bittern, crested guineafowl and a Ross’ turaco again, but not much else. But we got one final surprise: a marsh mongoose froze about 20 meters in front of us, just long enough for me to get a quick picture of it before it dashed off. A fitting end to a memorable day.
Next up: Murchison falls (this time a little quicker, I hope)
Birds
163. Woodland kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis)
164. Crowned hornbill (Lophoceros alboterminatus)
165. White-backed vulture (Gyps africanus)
166. Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus)
167. African openbill stork (Anastomus lamelligerus)
168. Black crake (Zapornia flavirostra)
169. Northern red-billed hornbill (Tockus erythrorhynchus)
170. Olive bee-eater (Merops superciliosus)
171. Black-headed gonolek (Laniarius erythrogaster)
172. African mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens)
173. Bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus)
174. Yellow-fronted canary (Serinus mozambicus)
175. Black-bellied bustard (Lissotis melanogaster)
176. Goliath heron (Ardea goliath)
177. Crowned lapwing (Vanellus coronatus)
178. Cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis)
179. Knob-billed duck (Sarkidiornis melanotos)
180. Yellow-billed oxpecker (Buphagus africanus)
181. Spur-winged lapwing (Vanellus spinosus)
182. Grey-headed fiscal (Lanius excubitoroides)
183. Yellow-throated longclaw (Macronyx croceus)
184. African skimmer (Rynchops flavirostris)
185. Common sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos)
186. African fish eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer)
187. Black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus)
188. Grey kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus)
189. Grey-headed gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus)
190. Yellow-throated greenbul (Arizelocichla chlorigula)
191. Long-crested eagle (Lophaetus occipitalis)
192. Olive-bellied sunbird (Cinnyris chloropygius)
193. Western citril (Crithagra frontalis)
194. African blue flycatcher (Elminia longicauda)
195. Red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea)
196. Crested guineafowl (Guttera pucherani)
197. Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus)
198. Black-and-white manakin (Spermestes bicolor)
199. Great blue turaco (Corythaeola cristata)
200. Black-and-white casqued hornbill (Bycanistes subcylindricus)
Mammals
26. Topi (Damaliscus lunatus)
27. Uganda kob (Kobus kob thomasi)
28. Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius)
29. Eastern black-and-white colobus (Colobus guereza)
30. African savanna elephant (Loxodonta Africana)
31. African buffalo (Syncerus caffer)
32. Lion (Panthera leo)
33. Blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis)
34. Red-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus Ascanius)
35. Tantalus monkey (Chlorocebus tantalus)
36. Banded mongoose (Mungos mungo)
37. Giant forest hog (Hylochoerus meinertzhageni)
38. Ugandan red colobus (Piliocolobus tephrosceles)
39. Grey-cheeked mangabey (Lophocebus albigena)
40. Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
41. Marsh mongoose (Atilax paludinosus)
