One Day Birding Mabamba and Mpanga Forest offers a rewarding birding experience as you explore the vast wetlands at Mabamba and Mpanga tropical forest. This birding tour will be led buy our expert bird guide setting off from Entebbe or Kampala to explore Mabamba wetlands also Uganda’s top birding hotspot notable for the Shoebill and other wetland species. The tour then extends into Mpanga Forest, a patch of tropical rainforest located west of Mabamba wetlands that offers a rewarding forest birding experience.
One Day Birding Mabamba and Mpanga Forest Tour Overview
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Birding for Shoebill at Mabamba
With an early start from Entebbe or Kampala a 2-hrs drive will get us to Mabamba wetlands, where we take on a motorized local canoe give access the wetland interior through a maze of papyrus edged water channels. Mabamba’s low-oxygenated waters are stocked with mud fish, catfish and several fish species that are favorite prey for the Shoebill.
Other good species in the marsh to look out for include Lake Victoria biome species Papyrus Gonolek, Northern Brown-throated Weaver, Carruthers’ and Winding Cisticola, Lesser Jacana, Blue-breasted Bee-eater, Blue-headed Coucal and more. Other papyrus species include Black-crowned Night Heron, Striated Heron, Pygmy and Spur-winged Geese, White-faced Whistling Duck, Black Stilt, Purple, Reed Cormorant. Purple and Grey Heron, Malachite Kingfisher, Lesser Reed Warbler, Black Crake, African Jacana, Pied Kingfisher, and many others.
the marsh attracts seasonal congregations including Gull billed Terns, White-winged Black Tern, Whiskered Tern, Ruff and several Sandpipers. Resident Grey-headed Gulls, Little Stint, Yellow Wagtail, Eurasian Marsh Harriers and Osprey occur seasonally while African Marsh Harrier, African Fish Eagle, Palm-nut Vulture are resident raptors.
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Mpanga Forest Birding
After a hot lunch overlooking the Mabamba marsh, we head out to the 45km2 Mpanga Forest a mid-altitude rain forest hosting some 180 bird species and several primates. Highlight species to look out for include African Pied, Crowned and Black and White Casqued hornbill, Toro Olive and Spotted Greenbul, Green-tailed Bristlebill, Western Black-headed Oriole, Cassin’s Hawk-eagle, Shikra, Weyn’s Weaver, Common Waxbill, Red-chested Cuckoo, Fraser’s Flycatcher Thrush, White-tailed Ant-thrush, Green Hylia, Green Crombec, Grey Throated and Yellow-spotted Barbets, Yellow-ramped Tinkerbird, Black-necked and Grosbeak Weavers and several primates.
One Day Birding Mabamba and Mpanga Forest tour Includes
- Transport with a Bird Guide/Driver
- Drinking water
- Community fees and entrance fees
- Lunch
Excludes
- Tips to guides and driver.
- Other drinks and meals not mentioned.