Shoebill & Papyrus

The prehistoric bird of Mabamba Bay

Days in the field

$890

From, per person sharing

2 – 7 guests

Group size

Year round; best January to March

When to travel

The trip

What this safari is

This is the trip for a traveller with a few days and one ambition. Mabamba Bay is a Ramsar wetland of floating papyrus channels an hour from Entebbe, and it holds one of the most reliable Shoebill populations on earth. We go early, we go quietly, and we go with the men who know every channel by name.

Highlights

Two dawn canoe sessions in the Mabamba channels, not one
Guided by fishermen-turned-conservationists from the landing site
Lutembe Bay at dusk for waders, terns and roosting pelicans
Entebbe Botanical Gardens for Great Blue Turaco within the city

Day by day

The itinerary

Timings shift with weather and with what the birds are doing. Your guide will tell you the night before.

We collect you at Entebbe International and you are birding within the hour, because the Botanical Gardens are ten minutes from the terminal and hold more than 100 species in 40 hectares. It is a gentle, shaded introduction to East African birding, and a good place to reset your ear to unfamiliar calls. Evening briefing over dinner on the lake shore.

Great Blue Turaco Orange Weaver Woodland Kingfisher Ross's Turaco Black-headed Gonolek

A pre-dawn transfer to the landing site, and into narrow wooden canoes as the mist lifts off the papyrus. Shoebills hunt at first light, standing motionless for twenty minutes at a stretch, and patience is the whole method. Your polers grew up fishing these channels; several now earn more from birding than they ever did from fish, which is the conservation story of this wetland in a single sentence. Afternoon at leisure, then Lutembe Bay for the evening roost.

Shoebill Papyrus Gonolek Blue-breasted Bee-eater African Fish Eagle Malachite Kingfisher Lesser Jacana

We build in a second morning on the water deliberately. Wild birds do not perform to a schedule, and a single session is a gamble we would rather not take with your only trip. If the Shoebill showed well yesterday, today is for the swamp's other residents and for photography. Back to Entebbe for a day room, lunch, and your onward flight.

Shoebill Swamp Flycatcher Winding Cisticola Long-toed Lapwing Pied Kingfisher

What is included