Detailed Tour Plan of Shoebill Mabamba Swamp Bird Watching Tours
Have a hefty breakfast and after, vacate your hotel in Kampala ready to embark on 60 minutes’ drive west of Entebbe. Make sure you have a good camera and binoculars to boost your birding experience. Arrive early to take the boat ride to start your long day bird spotting with expectations to sight the elusive shoebill storks.
The other interesting bird species to keep you excited on your birding tour in Mabamba include yellow billed ducks, common Suico heron, Angola swallows, whale headed stork, malachite kingfishers, purple herons, blue breasted kingfishers, spur winged goose, great cormorant, sooty chat, red billed fire finch, little stint, African fish eagles, blue breasted bee-eaters, lesser jacana’s, pied kingfishers, crowned hornbill, knob-billed duck and a lot more. Shoebill Mabamba Swamp Bird Watching Tours
Get back on your canoe/boat ride, relax and then drive back to your hotel/area of residence. This will mark the end of your Uganda bird watching safari in Mabamba Wetland.
he shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) looks like it belongs in the prehistoric age. Found in the marshes of East Africa, the shoebill is classified as vulnerable and is a bucket-list sighting for any avid birder.
The King Whale-Head (the English translation of Balaeniceps rex) appears from the front like an old university professor, big-nosed, peering over his spectacles. Very serious, very respectable. From almost any other angle though, he’s a total hoot.
In profile, one can see the array of disheveled tufts of feathers that shoot out at all angles from his crown. His dimensions too are something of an eye-opener. He has massive feet, an enormous beak and is very, very tall for a bird. Despite his prehistoric appearance and the craziness that is his proportions, the shoebill stork is actually quite endearing if you bother to dig a little deeper. Shoebill Mabamba Swamp Bird Watching Tours
Here are seven reasons to love this big bird:
1. They may be big, but they can fly if they want to. Granted, shoebills don’t fly very far or very often, but flying is no mean feat considering they can grow up to 1.5m tall and weigh up to 7kg!
2. Shoebills eat fish that look almost as prehistoric as they do! Although shoebills have been known to gulp down other birds, baby crocodiles, frogs, terrapins, water snakes and even small mammals, the lungfish is their staple diet.
3. Their distinguishing feature is the enormous shoe-shaped bill, measuring an incredible 20-24 centimeters in length and 10-12 centimeters in width, with a razor-sharp, curved hook at the end. Shoebills use their bills to strike their prey, known as a “collapse”, and it’s the antitheses of its patient stalking technique. Like a geological fault accumulating kinetic energy, this blue monolith will bolt downwards when triggered loose by the rippling of an incoming fish. Headfirst, gape open, and wings spread, it smashes through the vegetation in the hopes of coming up with a fish. Then, whilst keeping its head aloft from the water, it will slide its bill sideways so as to severe its prey, while the water and vegetation snatched up in the strike spills out from the edges of the bill. Shoebill Mabamba Swamp Bird Watching Tours
Shoebill Uganda Tours