Top 10 Species List

When we embarked on our first sub-Saharan African safari trip in 2015, we didn't know what exactly to expect. I mean, sure, we knew we'd see some animals. Elephants, hopefully. Giraffes and lions, maybe. I don't know what else. Buffalo? Leopards? Hippos? We didn't really think too much about what we'd see in specific because at that point we hadn't seen anything ever outside of some sort of zoo. The first elephant we'd see would be the first wild elephant we'd ever seen. Same for giraffes, lions, buffalo, leopards, hippos and everything else on the entire continent of Africa. In essence, we were ready to take what we could get and we'd be perfectly happy with whatever we saw.

That changed with our second safari trip. On our 2018 vacation to Kenya and Tanzania, we had a top ten list of animals we'd never seen in the wild. I'm not sure of the exact order but (and I'm going from memory here), I believe we had leopard, rhino, zebra, painted dog, ostrich, secretary bird, cheetah, gerenuk, hyena and pangolin on the list. We saw seven of the ten and went home extremely happy, missing only the painted dog (extremely rare in Kenya and Tanzania), the gerenuk (not where we went in 2018) and the pangolin (nocturnal). Seven out of ten ain't bad as far as I'm concerned.

So fast forward to 2023 and our trip to Uganda, a trip we had scheduled for October 2020 before the world and viruses had other ideas. And OF COURSE, we had another top ten list. After all, doing it one time in 2018 meant we couldn't back off and not do it this time, right? 

Here's how we fared against this year's top ten list. Spoiler alert: we didn't do quite as well as we did in 2018.

1. Mountain Gorillas

OK, OK, so this is a complete softball of sorts. I mean gorillas were the main attraction on this trip. We couldn't NOT see these primates up close and personal, could we? That's like going to see Taylor Swift and having the show end after beabadoobee and Gracie Abrams are done with their sets. 

And yes, I had to look at who was opening for Taylor Swift and no, we didn't get tickets. 

So of course, we did see gorillas in Uganda from feet away on foot with nothing between us and them and it was amazing. The intimacy was just all around. There was real creature to creature connection here, and by that I mean connection between human creatures and some of the nine gorillas we trekked to see. The trip delivered what it promised to deliver. Nature sometimes throws you a curveball and you don't get to see what you came to see. Fortunately, that wasn't the story on this trip. Number one checked off!

2. Chimpanzees

Yep, also a bit of a softball, here. Our chimpanzee trek in the Kibale National Park was incredible and totally unexpected in its awesomeness. No, it didn't beat seeing the gorillas in the wild from feet away but that day, I wondered how seeing gorillas could possibly be better than seeing chimpanzees.

Before we left home for Uganda, I actually didn't consider seeing chimps in the wild a slam dunk. I did actually think we could strike out (to continue the mixed sports allusions) on this walk and see absolutely nothing whatsoever. I loved this day. The intelligence and human-ness of the chimpanzees we got close to really shone through in a way watching few other species could possibly have done.

I love the picture of the chimpanzee above by the way. I see it as very Planet of the Apes like. The smarts absolutely come through loud and clear.

3. Shoebills

OK, so three for my first three. This one was not a gimme and we only saw one but we did lay eyes on one of these giant birds in person in the Mabamba Swamp. While there was absolutely a very high chance we could venture out on our shoebill day and not see a single one of these creatures, the shoebill was third on my list because we made a specific trip to see this bird. That was sort of a theme on this trip; we took three species-specific safari days, one each for gorillas, chimpanzees and shoebills. These were the top three things we targeted on this trip that we had never seen before. We got lucky and got all three.

Considering we saw maybe about seven or eight gorillas, thirty or so chimpanzees and just one shoebill, I know we had some luck on our side this day. Never feel like you are entitled to a show when nature is involved.

4. Painted Dogs

No picture on this one because quite simply, we didn't see any. No encounter, no picture. That's how this post is going to roll. Yes, this is a repeat (and a miss) from 2018.

When we first visited sub-Saharan Africa, we had no idea there was such a thing as a painted dog (sometimes called African wild dog). We saw one of those yellow, diamond-shaped road signs warning of the presence of painted dogs on our way from the Victoria Falls airport to our hotel on the first day we ever spent in sub-Saharan Africa and we actually mocked it (like...who wants to see a painted dog?). How stupid and ignorant were we back then? But legitimately, we didn't understand what these things were. Never heard of them.

Painted dogs are for sure an apex predator in Africa. They are not the same as hyenas, which sort of fill a role somewhere between hunter and scavenger on the savannah. These things are fast, intelligent, coordinated, aggressive pack hunters who relentlessly pursue their prey until they kill it. They are impressively scary. But they weren't where we went in Uganda. Nowhere close really.

That sign that we saw in Zimbabwe in 2015 was maybe not the closest we got to seeing these animals live. We actually went on two off-road wild goose chases looking for painted dogs on our way to and from Chobe National Park on that trip with neither yielding a sighting for me (although our guide claimed he'd seen some in the headlights on the night off-roading adventure). 

5. Gerenuks

No gerenuk picture either on this post. A gerenuk (also on my 2018 top 10 list) is often called a giraffe-gazelle, so named because it's a gazelle with a long neck (duh...). Its neck length allows it to reach medium-hanging leaves that animals like impalas and kudus can't reach because their mouths never get to that height off the ground. If its neck weren't enough of an advantage, the gerenuk can also stand on its hind legs to get even more elevation.

Because these lists of species that I make are often emotional, I didn't check out if all the animals that made the list actually live in the places we were traveling. There are no gerenuks in Uganda. Their range is further east in eastern Kenya, eastern Ethiopia, Somalia and northeastern Tanzania. I'm definitely not putting them on any future list (if there ever is one) unless I'm in one of those spots in the future. 

FYI, Somalia is not on any sort of travel list for me at all. 

6. Great Blue Turacos

So from what I just wrote about gerenuks not being anywhere close to where we were headed, I may have given the impression that I pulled together this list without any research whatsoever. Not exactly true. Some of my wish list was emotional and impulsive (hence, the gerenuk and yes, rare for me, I know) but I did do a little homework ahead of time, although much of that didn't extend beyond studying the East African Birds pamphlet shown in the cover picture of this post. But that is how I found the great blue turaco.

There are not a ton of super-colorful medium to large birds in Africa, so when I saw the great blue turaco in our wildlife guides and the noticed they live in forests where we'd be heading for the first time in Africa ever, I thought there might be a chance. The great blue turaco is a bit more than two feet from head to tail when fully grown so we are not talking about a small bird here. It's brightly colored from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail so this seemed like a bird worth looking out for.

We didn't really have to do much looking out. While we were wrapping up lunch after our chimpanzee trek, we saw five or six or these birds fly into a tree right next to the gazebo where we were eating. The lighting wasn't great. It was about high noon and the sun being almost directly overhead didn't allow me to take any pictures that weren't significantly backlit. Still...great blue turaco sighting in the books.

We did actually see a few more of these birds right after lunch when we took a stroll around the Bigodi Swamp but the lighting on that spotting was even worse than at lunch.

7. Kingfishers

I've been a little kingfisher fixated lately. We saw three different species down in Costa Rica last October and it whetted my appetite for some more sightings on this trip to Africa. I put kingfishers on the list here because I knew we'd be taking two boat rides on this vacation that might get us a look or two. It worked. We found these birds on both of those boat rides and on safari in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park. No shortage of kingfisher sightings on this trip. We even saw one at our hotel on Zanzibar one afternoon.

We managed to lay eyes on three different types of kingfisher in Uganda. On our trip to find shoebills in the Mabamba Swamp, we came across the black and white pied kingfishers both in the Swamp and over Lake Victoria along with the multi-colored malachite kingfishers when we arrived at the Swamp. The bird above is a woodland kingfisher that we found in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park nowhere near water. These birds eat fish to survive. No idea what it was doing in the middle of landscape populated almost exclusively by candelabra cacti. 

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are about 90 species of kingfishers distributed throughout the world. I have a lot of work to do. That also means there's a lot of places where I can find these things in the future.

8. Bee-Eaters

The place where I really fell in love with small birds, and which made me into an avid birdwatcher wherever we've been since, was Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania. Among the many birds we saw in that Park was a carmine bee-eater. I managed to capture one sitting on a thorny branch of a tree and it's one of my favorite photographs from that trip. I thought since we saw one in Tanzania, maybe we'd be able to see some in Uganda also. We did.

Bee-eaters are little, brightly colored birds with curved beaks and a stripe that extends from their beaks to the back of their heads. They are quick and acrobatic flyers which eat (perhaps quite obviously here) bees, wasps and hornets. We only saw bee-eaters on one day on our trip but we did see two different species. The one above is (I believe) a blue-cheeked bee-eater which is generally found in northern Africa and the Middle East but which sometimes winters further south between the tropics.

Appropriately, the bee-eater above is sitting in a thorny tree. Always with the thorny trees these birds in Africa. 

9. Pangolins / 10. Aardvarks

Pangolins (like painted dogs and gerenuks) were on my 2018 list so I had to carry it forward, right? I knew there was basically no chance of seeing this nocturnal anteater so I thought I'd double down and add another nocturnal anteater, the aardvark, to round out the list in the number 10 spot. Yeah...didn't see either. I mean not even close.

So...10 species. Six seen, including multiple species of kingfishers and bee-eaters. I don't think that's too bad considering this was our third safari and we've pretty much seen every animal and bird that's an obvious and well-known African species. Sure we are missing some from the list above and there are some species of some animals (notably hyenas and zebras) that we haven't yet seen, but we've covered all the big and famous stuff by now.

I see a few more safaris in our future. I'd say at least two more on mainland Africa. Maybe more. Who knows. At least something that touches South Africa in some way and maybe a trip through the Namib Desert. Those would be my top two.

When and if either of those two (or a different one) happens, I'm not sure I'm going with a top ten list of species we want to see. I think going forward I'd prefer to take a trip to find a specific species that is missing off our list and we'll take whatever else we can see while we are on that trip. So I think the next one of these we take has to target the painted dog in a serious way. That's the one species we long to see more than any other. Sure there are some experiences we'd like to see like lions finishing a hunt or a leopard carrying a dead impala or something like that up a tree but we can't guarantee those things happening even if we see those animals. Next safari trip to Africa: painted dog has to the be target.

But that's the future. For 2023...six of ten on our list seen. I'll take that.

Malachite kingfisher, Kazinga Channel, Uganda.

Swamp Music

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.

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 feet 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 had 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.

One shoebill was not all that this day had to offer us. I think it's worth saying a few words about some of the other species of birds we bumped into, if for no other reason than to show off some of our other pictures from our swamp tour.

Our trip to the Mabamba Swamp was for sure all about our feathered friends. But it was not all about the shoebill. From pretty much the minute we stepped into our first boat, we were looking for birds. We saw tons of egrets standing on tiny clumps of vegetation floating on Lake Victoria. We saw a pair of crowned cranes (the national bird of Uganda for what it's worth) flying overhead. We saw tern-like birds traversing over the Lake (I have no idea if they were actually terns but they LOOKED like terns) going from one point to another.

We also saw an abundance of pied kingfishers hovering over the water and then diving down to catch fish, or at least try. I love kingfishers. We saw some along the banks of the Chobe River in Botswana and Namibia on our first sub-Saharan African trip in 2015. We also found at least three different species of these birds down in Costa Rica last October. For all my enthusiasm about kingfishers, I had no idea that they fished on the wing. I assumed they waited on plants by the side of the water and watched and dived when they saw a fish. Clearly the pied kingfishers over Lake Victoria proved me wrong. Who knew?

We didn't stop seeing kingfishers when we got to the papyrus swamp itself. There we saw more pied kingfishers hanging out on the papyrus reeds along with a few malachite kingfishers, the smaller but eminently more colorful version of this bird type. Same huge bill in proportion to its body and head but just way prettier. Not knocking the black and white pieds but its difficult to overcome the vivid colors on the malachite. 

This would not be the last time we'd find kingfishers on this vacation, which was perfectly fine with me.

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.

African jacana, purple heron and one last look from (and at) the shoebill.

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How We Did It

We found our day trip to the Mabamba Swamp to search for shoebills on Viator.com, a website owned by the same group that owns TripAdvisor which features tours of various types from airport transfers to half day tours to multi-day adventures all over the world. It's a great clearinghouse for ideas of what might be available to do in any location pretty much anywhere on the planet. Even if we don't end up booking a trip through Viator, we often look on there for ideas when planning a vacation.

The specific tour that we took that day was the One Day Mabamba Swamp Bird Watching Trip, which is operated by East African Jungle Safaris Ltd. You can book this tour either through Viator or directly through the tour operator. The tour was fantastic. We got picked up and dropped off at our hotel, got a case of water thrown in for free and lunch at a local restaurant with plenty of Ugandan starches was included. This is not a cheap trip. We ended up shelling out $520 for this day and that doesn't include tips for our driver or either of the guys operating the two boats were ferried around in. Our logic here was when are we ever going to look for shoebills ever again. It would have been an expensive test of our travel insurance policy if we'd have missed our connection and paid $520 for a missed trip. 

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