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Bird Watching - Uganda
Uganda is an equatorial
country of astonishing contrasts. No other area in Africa can
match its amazing diversity of habitats ranging from arid
semi-deserts, rich savannahs, lowland and montane rainforests,
vast wetlands, volcanoes and an afro-alpine zone and covering an
altitude from 650 to 5000m.
This richness is reflected
in the number of birds per squarekilometer the highest than any
other country in Africa. Given the small size of the country,
approximately 235,000 kilometers squared, Uganda boasts a
national bird list of over 1008 species. This represents more
than half the bird species that can be found in the whole of
Africa.
Forests
Uganda has an area
contiguous with the Great Guinea / Congo Basin rain forest on
its western boarder. Subsequently there are a number of west and
central African bird species occurring in Uganda that are not
found elsewhere in East Africa. There are more than 700
forest reserves in Uganda.
One particular region is
the Albertine Rift Endemic area (ARE), which has 38 species of birds
confined to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo. Of these ARE’s Uganda has
25, mostly confined to the forests of Mgahinga and Bwindi
National Parks in the Southwest.
Checklist Ugandan Birds
Fill in your name and email
address and we will sent you our extensive, 74 page checklist of
Ugandan Birds in Adobe PDF format (641 KB)
Wetlands
Uganda has 30,000 sq kms of
wetlands, 210 species from the shoebill and African Skimmer to
the endemic Fox’s Weaver are found in these wetlands.
More to the above are 4
Papyrus endemics; including the Papyrus Gonolek, Papyrus Canary,
White-winged Warbler, Papyrus Yellow warbler and a White winged Black
Tern roost of 2-3 million birds in the Entebbe (Lutembe bay)
area.
Savannas
In Uganda Savannas vary
from the remote, semi-dessert, dry thorn-scrub region of
Karamoja in the Northeast, to the richer fertile savannahs of
the western rift valley. Queen Elizabeth National Park has a
bird list of 604 species the highest for
any protected area in Africa. |