Joseph Ssenkoomi was nineteen, working a boat at Mabamba for a tour operator who paid him for the fish he caught, not the birds he could find. A visiting birder handed him a pair of binoculars to hold while she changed a lens. He pointed them at a grey shape in the papyrus.
The Shoebill did not move for forty minutes. Neither did he. By the time it finally struck at a lungfish, something had rearranged itself. He had grown up beside these birds without ever really seeing one, because nobody had put the right piece of glass in his hands.
That is the whole idea behind this company. The best guide in the forest grew up beside it — but only if somebody gives them the binoculars, the training, and a reason to stay.
Shoebill · Mabamba Bay Wetland
Twenty per cent of every Bird Year fare goes into the sponsorship fund. Community fees at Mabamba and Bigodi are paid at the landing site, in full, to the people who do the work.
Flamingo numbers swing with rainfall. Pittas are seasonal. Shoebills are reliable but wild. We would rather set an honest expectation than sell a photograph we cannot promise.
Ten guests is our ceiling and most departures run smaller. Beyond that you stop birding and start queueing for the scope.
Each year the fund carries one young African birder — aged eighteen to twenty-five, from a low-income African country — through a full year of guided field training. Optics, transport, mentorship, and a place on real departures alongside working guides.
Allan, who guides our forest trips, came through it. He is now the reason a good many of our guests find their first Black Bee-eater, and the most persuasive argument the programme has.
Four people, one office in Entebbe, and a great deal of time spent standing very still in wet places.
Known to almost everyone as The Bird Man. Joseph has guided the wetlands and forests of Uganda for two decades, and founded the company on a single conviction: that the people who live beside the birds should be the ones who profit from them.
Teddy handles everything between your first enquiry and your last transfer — itineraries, permits, dietary needs, and the hundred small arrangements that decide whether a trip feels effortless.
A forest specialist with an ear that consistently beats the group's binoculars. Allan came through the sponsorship programme himself, which makes him its most persuasive argument.
Henry keeps the bookings, the vehicles and the back office running, so that everyone else can be in a swamp at five in the morning.