Bulletin 362 - Uganda #6 - Bushshrikes and Elephants

After the week in the Capetown area, the guide Casper Badenhorst, and I flew to Uganda and met a local guide. We started at Entebbe Airport on the southeast corner of Uganda and made a diagonal trip to Murchison Falls NP in the northwest corner. From there, we proceeded south through a chain of nature preserves and parks to the southwest corner at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. We finished along the southern border back to the airport.

Bushshrikes are an African family of 50 species, some of which have spectacular colors. I photographed 7 new species in Uganda. All these birds have heavy bills with a hook tipped upper mandible.

The 8" Albertine Sooty Boubou (Laniarius holomelas) is a recent split (2010) and is found only in the mountains of Eastern Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It is all black with a black eye.

Albertine Sooty Boubou

The 7" Marsh Tchagra (Bocagia minuta) is brown with a black and white head and  a black tail.

Marsh Tchagra

The 7" Northern Puffback (Dryoscopus gambensis) is black and white with a red eye.

Northern Puffback

The 7" male Lüdher's Bushshrike (Laniaruis luedheri) is a black and white bird with burnt orange crown, throat and breast.

Lüdher's Bushshrike - male

The 7" male Doherty's Bushshrike (Telophorus dohertyi) is multicolored with an olive back, yellow belly, red forehead and breast and a black ring around the red on face and breast.

Doherty's Bushshrike - male

The 7.5" male Papyrus Gonolek (Laniarius mufumbiri) inhabits papyrus reed beds. He is black above with a yellow crown and orange red below. Here are a couple of photos of this beautiful bird. This was also my first time to see papyrus reeds which are famous, as the ancient Egyptians used them to make a form of paper.

Papyrus Gonolek - male

Papyrus Gonolek - male

Lastly is the 8" male Black-headed Gonolek (Laniarius erythrogaster). He is an easy ID.

Black-headed Gonolek - male

One surprise on the trip was with elephants!. I always assumed that there were 2 species of elephant - African and Indian. But in Uganda we saw the 2 species of African elephants and I did not even realize when they said 'there is a Forest Elephant' that it was a separate species until I arrived home and was processing the pictures from the trip.

So the one usually seen by tourists in game parks is the African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana). Here is a family group, taken from the boat on the White Nile River.

African Bush Elephant

A couple of days later in another park of dense forest, an elephant crossed the road and the guide shouted Forest Elephant. This was my first and only sighting of this animal. The African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). It is the smallest of the 3 species of elephant. The shoulder height is about 3 feet shorter than the bush elephant.

African Forest Elephant

I put the different bird and mammal families in single folders for easy viewing

I have photos of 15 of the 50 species of bushshrikes

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald

dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2020 David McDonald

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