Murchison’s shy creatures

By Kalungi Kabuye There is more to the Murchison Falls National Park than the Murchison Falls. True, the falls and the ride to the bottom is one of the most anticipated for an interesting and famous tourist attraction, but there is more to Uganda’s largest national park than that. There are the birds, 460 species of them, and the boat ride to the Victoria Nile Delta, where the river breaks out into three channels as it enters lake Albert. And of course there is the Kanyiyo Pabidi Forest. Chimp tracking there boasts of 100% success. But first the birds. Like most Ugandans (Africans?), I took it that bird watching was mostly a mzungu thing, But that boat ride to the delta, along with a very informative guide, changed that very quickly indeed. The boat ride to the delta is not the first choice of many people that visit the park, and in fact very few know about it. But Nelson Guma, the park tourism warden, intends to change all that. That is why on our third day in the park we took the 14-seater boat for the five-hour journey to and fro. The character of the river changes as you go downstream, together with the current. It widens as it leaves the falls behind, and the colour changes. If you are lucky and it is a clear sky above, the sheer blueness of the water is blinding. It was overcast when we made the ride, and so it was mostly grey. But that did not discourage our guide, Dennis, from telling us all about the birds. My boat companions were mostly staff from the Paraa Safari Lodge, and Dennis was determined to teach them about birds, threatening to give us an exam at the end of it all. As you roll down to Lake Albert, you see more of the hippos that are such a main feature upstream, and the occasional shy crocodile that quickly slips back into the water. But, increasingly, there are papyrus islands, and these teem with bird life. Of course I had heard of the shoe-bill stork, and how rare it was and how old white people come thousands of miles just to have a look at it. This part of the River Nile has the greatest concentration of these birds in the world, and seeing one puts you in a very special class of people. As we went on, Dennis called out the different names of the birds we passed, and special facts about them. All of a sudden the Paraa staff were like little kids, excitedly calling out the birds even before Dennis did. The ‘goliath heron,’ the African jacana, the yellow-backed weaver, the African fish-eagle, and the darter with its wings spread out to dry. Then there was the pipe kingfisher, the carmine and the pink-backed pelican. There are almost too many types of storks to count: the open-billed stork, the saddle-billed stork, the wooly-necked stork, the mighty, mighty shoe-bill stork and allot more. The large slate-grey bird we saw did not seem to be very impressed with us, and quickly took off, but we had come, and we had seen it. We turned our eyes to down the Nile as it rolled on southwards to Lake Albert, where it makes an abrupt turn north. The river breaks up into three channels before it gets to the lake. The northern part, most, close to where I had spotted my first elephant the day before, is the Pearson Channel. Next to break off is the Nyakabiso Channel, and lastly the Kalolo Channel. We travelled along the Nyakabiso Channel. On both sides were floating islands covered in reed, where crocodiles rested and hippos waited for dark so they could feed. Here the Victoria Nile turns into the Albert Nile, although geologists say the river does not have much influence on the lake, barely entering 15 kilometers of its 160 kilometre length. Here we reluctantly bade farewell to the Nile, rolling down to Egypt. About the Kanyiyo Pabidi Forest, this 65 square km thicket is similar to Budongo Forest, although it has never been logged. Attractions here are chimp-tracking, and forests walks where you will most likely see the olive baboon,and a wide variety of game.