Bulletin 373 - Uganda #17 - Owl, Cuckoos, Pratincoles

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.

Unfortunately we did not do any night birding in Uganda because mostly we were exhausted from birding and driving long distances. But we did get one owl at dawn after a rainstorm overnight. And what an amazing owl it was. The 26" Verreaux's Eagle Owl (Bubo lacteus) is a grayish owl with dark eyes and pink eyelids! The pink eyelids are usually only seen if the owl has his eyes closed. But because of the rain all night, his feathers were matted down and the eyelids are plainly visible with his eyes open. This was the one owl I hoped to see on the trip as I missed it in the previous Africa trip. He is often seen on night drives on safari and people always remember seeing the "owl with the pink eyelids". It is the largest African owl and the only owl species in the world with pink eyelids.

Verreaux's Eagle Owl

Here he is watching us.

Verreaux's Eagle Owl

We saw a number of cuckoo species. The 16" Levaillant's Cuckoo (Clamator levaillantii) is  a black cuckoo with white underparts and streaking on the breast. It has a crest.

Levaillant's Cuckoo

The 12" Red-chested Cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius) is dark gray above and has stripes across the underside except for the red chest.

Red-chested Cuckoo

The stunning 9" African Emerald Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx cupreus) has an iridescent emerald green head, breast, body and wings. The belly is bright yellow.

African Emerald Cuckoo

The 13" Blue Malkoha (Ceuthmochares aereus) is a gray bird with some bl;ue on the wings and tail. But the bright yellow bill and bare blue skin around the eye are the easy ID marks.

Blue Malkoha

The 18" Blue-headed Coucal (Centropus monachus) is a beautiful showy bird with rufous wings, blue head and nape and a white breast. 

Blue-headed Coucal

The 16" White-browed Coucal (Centropus superciliosus) has reddish wings, a black crown, and a wide white stripe over the eye.

White-browed Coucal

Pratincoles are closely related to sandpipers. The 10" Collared Pratincole (Glareola pratincola) is a brown bird with a buffy throat surrounded by a thin black line.

Collared Pratincole

The 7.5" Rock Pratincole (Glareola nuchalis) is a brown bird with a black head and a prominent white stripe around back of the neck. It has a red bill and legs. It lives on rocks in the middle of rivers. I photographed this bird on the boat trip below Murchison Falls

Rock Pratincole

I just read an amazing nature book "World of Wonders" in praise of fireflies, whale sharks, and other astonishments. The author is Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She is a poet but a lover of all nature. The book is a compilation of many essays she had written over the past decade about various species in all nature - from dragon fruit and corpse flower to octopus and flamingo. I even learned a new interesting fact about Monarch Butterflies.

One amusing essay was a time she took her 2 young boys on a Christmas Bird Count and their comments as they were deep in the woods.

Barnes and Noble selected it as the book of the year 2020. It is so beautifully written as she is a poet. It is just delightful. I am sure you will love to read it.

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

I have photos of 33 of the 216 species of owls

I have photos of 23 of the 147 species of  cuckoos

I have photos of 3 of the 17 species of courses and pratincoles

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald

dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2020 David McDonald

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Bulletin 340 - South Africa #17 - Part 1 - Vultures, Cuckoos, Secretarybird, Mousebirds

I had an amazing 2 week trip to South Africa and scored almost 280 new species of birds as well as fantastic mammals and a few reptiles. My guide Casper Badenhorst was outstanding. You can see his web site here. He can be contacted through the web site or if you want his email it is info@birdingandwildlifesafaris.com. I recommend him highly as he showed me so many rare birds and animals. I will use him again when I go to Southern Africa.

The 55" Secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius) is a unique long-legged raptor in its own family. It has long plumes on the back of the head and very long tail feathers.

Secretarybird

Secretarybird

The Old Word vultures are included in the same family as hawks and eagles, unlike the New World vultures which are a separate family. I saw 6 species for the trip. The smallest is the 24" Palm-nut Vulture (Gypohierax angolensis). It is always associated with raphia palms as about 2/3 of its diet is the nuts of this tree. It is very rare in South Africa because that tree is not native there, but has been planted. The birds have followed.  This was another stroke of luck to see this bird. The guides 17 year old son, who is also a birder, has never seen this species. Here he is on top of that palm tree.

Palm-nut Vulture

The next larger is the 30" Hooded Vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus) It is a brown vulture with a white face, that turns red when excited.

Hooded Vulture

The 38" White-headed Vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) is black above, white below and a white head. This one has his crop full after gorging on a carcass, we will see later.

White-headed Vulture

The next larger is the 40" White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus). It is beige or brown backed with a gray neck and black face and bill.

White-backed Vulture

The 46" Cape Vulture (Gyps coprotheres) is a huge white headed vulture that I only saw overhead.

Cape Vulture

 The 46" Lappet-faced Vulture (Torgos tracheliotus) is a huge brown vulture with a pink head. Because of its size, it is able to tear open some larger carcasses when the smaller vultures cannot. The locals call it the 'can opener'.

Lappet-faced Vulture

I am sure everyone has seen nature shows of vultures fighting over a carcass. We saw this spectacle once. Here is a dead hyena and the vultures are swarming around trying to get at it.

Vultures

And in this one, some jackals are trying to get in as well.

 Vultures and jackal

Most cuckoos in the Old World are parasitic which means they lay their eggs in other birds nests (like our cowbirds here in Americas). 

The 12" Red-chested Cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius) has a gray head and back and a brick red chest.

Red-chested Cuckoo

The 7" male Klaas's Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx klaas) is bright green above and white below.

Klaas's Cuckoo - male

The 8" male Diederik Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius) is dark green on the back and wings with white spots on the wings and tail. It is snow white below and has a red eye.

Diederik Cuckoo - male

But the most beautiful is the 8" male African Emerald Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx cupreus) It is glossy green with a bright yellow breast and belly.

African Emerald Cuckoo - male

Continued on Part 2