After Pian Upe and just before Bokora Wildlife Reserve, we squeezed in a trip to Mt. Moroto courtesy of Emmy's epic birding vision. It was an interesting place where we did not get exactly what we expected, but saw tons of cool birds we didn't!
The first cool bird was at the UWS guest house in town, at about 4 in the morning. I woke up to the sound of Barn Owls screeching outside my room. I walked outside and stood in a little field with my headlamp, eventually catching a view of one flying by. A lifer owl for East Africa!
In the morning, we proceeded to Kara-Tunga Tours guesthouse to secure a guide for a hike up Mt. Moroto. It took us a while to get going, partly because of the friendly conversation with the nice folks at Kara-Tunga Tours. It was by far the best coffee I've had in Uganda and I intended to savour it. We learned about how this region was inhospitable to visitors until 2018. Karamajong tribesmen used to run around rustling cattle with AK-47s, until the national army came in and confiscated everybody's guns. We heard a shocking story of a prison break that had occurred in 2020. The prisoners broke into the armory and stole 14 guns. 217 prisoners escaped, 3 shot dead, and only 7 were captured. The rugged Mt. Moroto provided an ideal terrain for them to escape the manhunt and never be heard from again.
Once we finally got going, we had quite a distance through the town before getting to the forest and it was getting quite hot. Once in the habitat, we started getting birds. The first lifer was a pair of unexpected Boran Cisticolas with a distinctive song. Further up the mountain, there was some riparian habitat with huge fig trees, which had White-crested Turacos running through their canopy. We took some time to explore an isolated rocky outcrop, drawn in by the song of a Little Rock Thrush, another lifer! Wilson and Emmy very briefly glimpsed a West African Seedeater but I completely missed it. While looking, I found several condom wrappers discarded around a campfire. "Somebody got lucky here" I said. Wrong. The guide told me that the contraceptives had been used to fashion a slingshot for hunting birds. The government was trying to support family planning, but the locals seemed more interested in having children and letting them fill their bellies with wild birds, caught with the condom-launcher. We were very keen to see one of these weapons in action, and to take it off someone's hands as a souvenir.
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| White-crested Turaco |
As we walked further and further up the mountain via this valley, we crossed paths with an intermittent stream of locals brining burlap sacks of charcoal the opposite direction. Machete work could be heard picking the forest away bit by bit all throughout the valley, though it wasn't blatantly obvious. Alot of the kids we met didn't speak English or Kiswahili and apparently don't go to school. If these people keep sticking to the ways of the past but continue having more and more children, I fear Mt. Moroto Forest Reserve will become just Mt. Moroto.
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| A steady stream of illegal charcoal extraction goes unhindered by any rule of law to speak of |
As it warmed up, a new bird appeared along the ridge: a stunning White-headed Vulture. It was really cool and unexpected to see this critically endangered vulture in wooded canyon!
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| White-headed Vulture cruises by the cliff |
By now it was getting unbearably hot and sweaty and we focused our search on the seedeaters, which apparently are extremely shy. Singing atop a tree, an indigobird caught our attention. We took many pictures and sound recordings. In the same tree, we observed a female as well as a pair of African Firefinches. After considerable discussion, we concluded that these were Variable Indigobirds. The range map doesn't show them as being found in Uganda, so this must be a very good record!
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| Variable Indigobird |
We spotted a female West African Seedeater with 2 fledglings on the edge of a cultivation and I managed to snap some terrible quality pictures. There are no streaky seedeaters in this region, which is interesting. It was so hot that Emmy and Wilson wanted to go back down, so I contended myself with the views and we started walking down.
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| West African Seedeater adult (above) and juvenile (below) |
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| The habitat near where we heard the Orange River Francolins |
Just before we got to the bottom, Emmy took us into a dry riverbed where we tried calling for Orange River Francolin. We did get a response. We got into position, lying flat behind a rock and hearing them coming closer. It sounded to be two or three of the bastards. Then suddenly, they went silent and that was that. Emmy said they had become extra-shy due to all the condom-launchers in the area. Too bad! At least we got a Gambaga Flycatcher in that river bed. It was a swelteringly hot and sweaty ordeal and we were also hungry. We retreated to the Kara-Tunga guest house for some pizza and cold sodas and stuffed our faces.
That was to be our only day at Mt. Moroto, because we had time to spend in our next spot, Bokora Wildlife Reserve. I strongly feel that a more lengthy foray into the mountain, perhaps with camping, would reveal even more scintillating bird records. We did some food shopping for vegetables and other cooking wares on our way out, and at the produce market, spotted three boys carrying the mysterious weapon that made our birding so difficult: the condom-launcher a.k.a. condom cattapult! The least I could do was pay them 1000 Ugandan shillings to take it off their hands. One more step toward total disarmament of the region...just doing our part.
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