![]() ![]() Seymour arrived at the project ravenous after living on a diet of cassava for two days. ![]() The man kept the bird at home and later notified the project staff about its location. When he noticed footprints around the nest he believed the shoebill was at risk and took the baby bird into his care. A local villager heard stories that people from another nearby village were planning to steal the newly hatched shoebill. © African Parks/Bangweulu WetlandsĪfrican Parks employ guards to watch the known shoebill nests every season to protect the nests from people and fire, all of which threaten these prehistoric-looking birds. The chick was rescued by an environmentally conscious villager in Zambia’s Bangweulu Wetlands and is now in the care of the Bangweulu Wetlands Project. I had a tough time because the vegetation is high and I am oh so short.So ugly he’s cute: Seymour is a shoebill chick with a bottomless stomach, named ever so fittingly after Seymour in the Little Shop of Horrors. But we pulled over and everyone tried to get their glimpse of a lifer shoebill. ![]() It was one of those sightings where only someone who sees this bird constantly and knows them so well that only they could spot them because this bird was far and hidden and we were going about 50mph. As we were on the busy roadway, Herbert gasped. We scanned the swamp and did see it and we loaded into our vehicles to get to our next lodge. Herbert took us out for some more excellent birding through the day and toward the end we stopped by Nabajjuzi Swamp because he had a lead on a shoebill. You can see the birds and some more photos at our eBird checklist. And we did see the malachite kingfishers, jacanas and crakes, it was a lovely time. He wouldn’t let us leave town without seeing one. It was a disappointment and all part of the game but Herbert assured us that we would have other shoebill opportunities. We spend two hours in the wetland…and completely dipped on the shoebill. Our poor servers couldn’t keep us in our seats to eat or drink because were glued to the window for things like vervet monkeys and shikras. Herbert took us to breakfast and then we’d be off to the shoebill. Every movement was exciting and mostly likely a new bird. The next morning I woke and met my travel companions for the next two weeks in the parking lot a motley crew of birders from the United States, the UK, Panama, Australia and Taiwan. I’ll will have to dip on some.īut my flights were uneventful and after 24 hours of travel I found myself in Uganda crashing on a bed in a hotel room at 1am. And then there was the general anxiety of will we get the bird or miss it…because there are over 450 birds to seen in Uganda, I’m not going to see them all. ![]() I worried that something would go wrong with my flights from Minneapolis to Chicago to Brussels to Kigali to Entebbe would go wrong and I’d be delayed and miss it. The very first full day of the trip was our chance at the shoebill. I could barely think about this trip for months, even delaying vaccinations because I couldn’t believe it was real, something had to go wrong to make this not happen. Giraffes, hippos, leopards, chimps and gorillas were possible…but so is the shoebill, which can be found in freshwater swamps in central Africa. Then in May I got in touch with Herbert Byaruhanga from Bird Uganda Safaris and the opportunity to visit Uganda came. So I ordered them and populated my bullet journal with them. Even my non birding friends were excited about them. But hey, how often do you see shoebill stickers? Thanks to their popularity on the Internet, they warrant their own stickers. I’d never seen a shoebill and had no plans in the foreseeable future for that to happen. ![]()
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