This place is for the birds

                Among the many pleasures of being back: rediscovering what a wonderland of amazing bird species Uganda is. Glad we decided to bring along our very thick and very heavy field guide, “Birds of East Africa,” with all its scribbled notes of where we saw what. (Speckled Mousebird -- Queen Elizabeth park. Bare-Faced Go-away bird -- Lake Mburo. Brown Parrot, African White-backed Vulture -- Kidepo. Etc.)

                We haven’t been to the national parks again yet (that starts next weekend), but we’ve been seeing the birds nonetheless. The little fellow here is one of the Kingfishers – probably a Woodland Kingfisher.

They’re wonderful birds, some colorful like this one and some not; they have the very useful talent of being able to hover stationary in mid-air above the water and then dive suddenly for their prey.

                Theresa and I saw this one in the Botanical Gardens not far from Entebbe Airport, maybe 15 miles south of Kampala. They have a terrific small jungle to wander through along the shore of Lake Victoria, tall trees with vines dangling to the ground. High in the trees we saw a cluster of four or five Turacos, and heard the squawks of parrots.

                But we haven’t even needed to travel that far. The other day looking out the bathroom window I found myself staring straight at a pair of Ross’s Turacos. This is a truly spectacular breed, with rich red and blue colors. We had seen these from a distance down in the garden behind our flat a few days earlier, and one of

them had opened his big tail like a fan. (We haven’t been able to get them to sit still for our own photos yet; this one is thanks to the San Francisco Zoo.)

Back in 2007, our book reminds us, we saw the even larger Great Blue Turaco, with its tall black crest, just as we entered the (wonderfully named) Bwindi Impenetrable Forest en route to visit some gorillas with Steve & Bobbie.

While we were at the Botanical Garden, we saw a group of children having the time of their lives, sliding down a grass-and-dirt hillside – sitting on large palm fronds. Ezra, our friend and guide (to Ugandan life and to safari animals) laughed and said that when he was a kid, their mom used to cane them because she would get them all outfitted in new trousers and then they would run off and go sliding down the hill, inevitably slipping off the palm branch occasionally and ruining their clothes. Boys!