Handsome head, right? It's a shoebill. It's a bird. They are big. Like sometimes up to five feet tall big. And yes, that's pretty tall for a bird. If it wasn't obvious, the shoebill was named after its massive beak, which resembles (are you ready for this...) a shoe. It looks like some kind of prehistoric throwback but it's actually a close relative of herons and pelicans (although it's sometimes erroneously called a stork). And as soon as we finalized our decision to go to Uganda for a week this past winter, I knew I had to go find one of these things in the wild.
There are some places in the world that are easy to get to and then there are some that require a little more work. Kampala, Uganda would fall into the latter category, particularly if you are flying there. By requiring a little more work here, I mean there's no direct flight to Kampala from anywhere in the United States and there are very few commercial airlines that fly out of Dulles airport (near where we live) which also serve Kampala. There are just not a lot of regularly scheduled flights there.
After some searching, we ultimately settled on Emirates as our airline of choice to both take us to Uganda and bring us back from Zanzibar two weeks later. They were the only option where we could fly one stop each way. We'd have a generous 12-hour stopover in Dubai on the way home but would have less than two hours to connect on the way there. The big risk with this schedule was that if we missed our connection in Dubai, the next flight to Uganda was a full 24 hours later and our tour group would leave Kampala without us. We couldn't have that happen, so we decided to fly (and arrive) a day early.
This is not unusual behavior for us. When we have booked packaged tours in the past for our holidays where we'd miss the start of the tour by missing a connection, we have inevitably decided to arrive a day early so there was no (or maybe a greatly reduced) chance of our missing the start of the tour.
Arriving early to a place means one thing, of course. We need something to do. Sure, we could relax around the hotel and just hang out but that's not really our style, particularly if the destination we are traveling to is someplace we are not likely to ever return to. We see the day early arrival as an opportunity to find something we are interested in which is not on our tour.
An extra day in Kampala meant one thing: time to go find a shoebill.
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| On our way to Mabamba Swamp: egrets and fisherman. |
I can't quite remember when I became aware of the existence of shoebills. I remember watching some nature show about them at some point years ago and being fascinated by (1) their appearance and (2) the fact that they typically lay two eggs so that one chick survives. They for sure are a striking-looking bird, but why the second of these facts stuck in my head I have no idea. The intent of laying two eggs is to give one chick a really good chance of survival to adulthood. But in what is surely a grisly twist on the situation, the first chick that hatches inevitably kills its younger (and therefore weaker) brother or sister either to eat it or to get all the food from the parent shoebills with no competition. Little did I know at the time, but this type of survival strategy is common with larger birds.
When we started looking for activities around Kampala on Viator.com (which we regularly use to find things to do in new destinations) and some shoebill tours showed up, those got moved to the top of the list along with maybe one or two others. Eventually, the others dropped away and we stuck (not got stuck with...) with the shoebills.
So where do you find shoebills? Well, as it turns out, in freshwater swamps in central Africa. Its range on the continent covers from southern Sudan in the north down to northern Zambia in the south with a relatively thin east-west range. Pretty much right in the middle of their entire geographic footprint is Kampala. And right next to Kampala sits freshwater Lake Victoria, which is the largest lake in Africa. Part of the Lake's perimeter is defined by papyrus swamps, which are perfect homes for shoebills. Shoebill-wise, a swamp next to Kampala is pretty much the sweet spot on the planet. The stars are aligned here, right?
Our target for our first full day on the continent of Africa in almost five full years (a.k.a. too long) was a place called Mabamba Swamp, a wetland just to the west of Kampala and Entebbe Airport, about maybe a couple of miles from where we landed the previous day. The Swamp is not that easy to get to. While it's pretty much right next to Kampala where we were staying, getting there is no easy feat. It's over an hour drive through the city and its roads of questionable quality to get on a boat which takes you from the shore of Lake Victoria to the Swamp itself. From there, you need to get on a separate boat to go find a shoebill or two.
The second boat, by the way, looks pretty much identical to the first boat, even down to the color. The only difference is it's driven by a different dude. Different skill set to traverse a part of Lake Victoria vs. navigating a swamp looking for a large bird, I guess. No pooh-poohing the folks taking us over water on this day. They both did an outstanding job. And they both got us exactly what we needed.
The trip on Lake Victoria was a signature African moment for me. This lake is so large that it's visible on most globes and small-scale maps of the world. We spent so long on this portion of the journey that it seemed like we were crossing the entirety of the Lake. In reality, we probably traveled along like 1% of the Lake's perimeter. This is a very large body of water.
So we are looking for a big bird with a big beak whose offspring are prone to siblicide (it's a word; look it up). What else do we need to know. Random facts about birds time...
Yes, this bird is sizeable. A bird that can stand taller than an adult human is tall (yes, I'm talking about some humans on the smaller side, but still...). Its wingspan can get up to 2-1/2 feet larger than its height so not impossible to find these things with 7-1/2 between the tips of their two wings. I'm telling you, these creatures are large. On the weight side of things, though, they are actually pretty light, with a large male shoebill topping out at about 15 or 16 pounds. If that sounds like a lot for a bird which can fly, it is and it is not. There are species of albatross, swan and vulture that routinely weigh over 30 and even 40 pounds and still manage to get aloft.
Behavior-wise, shoebills are solitary beings. They don't gather together in flocks or nest in giant colonies like some other species of birds. They are slow and deliberate movers and hunters, using patience as their method of snatching fish from oxygen poor water when their prey strays too close to the surface of the water. They will also go after frogs and snakes and lizards. And they don't particularly like being visited by humans, which sometimes tends to make them flee when folks like me approach in a boat with an outboard motor making all sorts of noise.
My fascination with pretty much all species of birds only goes back a few years now, but I've long been a fan of large birds. I'm fascinated with their size is the only way to put it. And the shoebill has more than just a tall frame going for it: it's got that giant, almost comically oversized bill dominating its head. This thing is a lethal hunting instrument which it uses to scoop up prey from just below the water's surface. It's also equipped with a pretty sharp hook on the end for breaking out its shell when it's a baby. You know, before it either gets eaten by its brother or sister or does that act before its sibling can get its wits about it. I had to add the shoebill to my large birds seen in person in the wild list.
Oh, and on the prior paragraph, I do mean "pretty much all species of birds" and not all. I can't get into ducks and geese. They just don't do it for me. And also, I don't really have a formal, written large birds seen in person in the wild list.
Once we crossed through Kampala and across what turned out to be an insignificant portion of Lake Victoria, we were handed over to the capable hands of Emmanuel, who was our guide for the next hour plus. Time to venture into the papyrus.
This was the first time I had ever been to a papyrus swamp. I've been on boats in swamps and on rivers before, including in Africa, but I can't remember ever staring any papyrus plants in the face. Yes, this is the stuff the Egyptians used to make pretty much everything from, including some of the first writing paper for recording history and stuff like that on scrolls. The whole swamp here is basically a big mat of papyrus and other plants floating on top of the lake in loose but very large clumps or clusters. Birds and some other species of animals are light enough to walk around on these mats without sinking into the water. Rest assured, if we tried that, we'd sink down to the bottom right away.
Moving through a papyrus swamp really involves a good amount of finding your own way. At times, it appeared there was no way we could move any further into a particular portion of the swamp, only for Emmanuel to take us into some sliver or crack between mats of vegetation and keep going. Watch your head on the papyrus plants by the way. Some of their seedpods or whatever they are pretty much right at eye level. Make sure you keep an eye out for weaver nests, also. Although the weavers seem to be smart enough as birds to locate their homes above human-head-in-a-boat height.
If I've made it seem like we went to a pretty remote part of Uganda to find shoebills, I guess we did. But we were also by no means alone in our quest that date. We seemed at times to be surrounded by other people just like us, with each party in their own boats with their own version of Emmanuel. Some boats were pretty packed, with five or six passengers in addition to a guide or two. Ours, at an occupancy of three, was one of the lightest boats. We never saw any with fewer than that number of folks riding and guiding the boats through the papyrus.
So obviously we saw a shoebill. Either that or I'm posting some photographs from a source other than my own camera on this blog (I'm not; I took all these pics). But we did just see one and one alone. And just in one spot. The first couple of forays we took into the swamp proper were fruitless. When we got there either first or trailing a half dozen other boats, we were told either by Emmanuel or by one of the guides on another boat that the bird and flown. And no, we didn't see them on the wing.
Eventually, after those first failed attempts, it was our guide Emmanuel who declared he had spotted one and took us right to it. He was right. That's the one that appears in this post. Mission accomplished. We saw what we came to see.
Sometimes nature doesn't cooperate at all when we go looking for wildlife. There have been many days we have spent out in the wild somewhere in the world when we didn't really see anything much at all (I'm looking at you, whales, pretty much everywhere). This situation becomes even more dicey when you are searching for a specific species and the success of the day really hinges on seeing that animal, even if there are tons of other creatures around. We got what we came for here and I am grateful for that. So grateful.
But I am telling you, these shoebills are slow and deliberate and can be pretty un-exciting. The one we kept our eyes on for a while that day and which we left and came back to later in the same day in the exact same spot really didn't do much at all. No hunting, no eating, not really much walking, no feeding, no caring for chicks (or chick) and no interacting with other shoebills. It didn't even make any noise and these birds can apparently make quite a clattering sound with those big beaks. We got some preening. And that was really it.
Still...we wanted to see a shoebill and see a shoebill we did. I'm happy we made it and that we got what we came to see.
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| Pied kingfisher (top) and malachite kingfisher (bottom). |
We found a couple of more birds inside the swamp that were unexpected treats. We found a ton of African jacanas, birds that are so light that they can walk on the lily pads floating on the edge of the papyrus plants, in search of food. The jacana is also known as the Jesus bird because it appears to walk on water. We'd seen these birds (like the kingfishers) down along the banks of the Chobe River in 2015 but I didn't remember the light blue coloration on top of their heads. That blue patch really makes these birds stand out.
Maybe the ones on the Chobe are slightly different. Or maybe my memory from 7-1/2 years ago is faulty. There was a lot to take in on that trip after all.
We also managed to spot a purple heron. Now, we can see herons near us at home if we go to the right spots around us. Heck, we saw a great blue heron a few years ago in Vermont, so it's not like you need to travel to the tropics to see herons. But if you want a lot of variety, you need to travel down south (from where we live) and get tropical. We saw five different species of heron on a single boat ride along the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica last fall which was an incredible heron day for us. But we didn't find any purple herons on that trip. In fact, I think this is the first purple heron I've seen anywhere, ever.
There were also plenty of blue swallows swooping around as we moved through the papyrus. There are no pictures of the swallows on this post. If you have ever tried to photograph a swallow, you'll know why.
This day was NOT all about the shoebills, although it was clearly all about the shoebills. It's not all we saw, but if we hadn't seen one, we'd have been disappointed with a few kingfishers, a heron and a couple of Jesus birds.
This tour started early (before seven in the morning which was fine considering how jetlagged we were that first day) and didn't take the whole day, which was great as a half or three quarters day excursion to get us an introduction to Uganda. The fact that we came nowhere close to any sort of shoebill habitat on the entire rest of this trip meant that our day in the Mabamba Swamp was a good use of our time. Plus, the early finish allowed us to get back to the hotel and get a bit more R and R before the start of our group tour in earnest.
I don't like to ever say that I'm never going to repeat anything we've done on our trips throughout the world but legitimately, what are the odds that I'll ever see a shoebill in the wild ever again? I'm thinking it's about nil. This was our shot. We took it and it worked. Shoebill seen.
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| African jacana, purple heron and one last look from (and at) the shoebill. |
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