Uganda - morning, Fridayy March 18th - Budongo forest, road-side walk

The plan was to set-off after a more relaxed start to the day. Having loaded the bus and set-off Harriet spotted this Red-shouldered Cuckoo-Shrike:

So we were out and birding while still in the grounds of the lodge. We were in high spirits heading back to Masindi, even though the end of the holiday was getting closer. We had a dahl-fry promised for dinner and were very much looking forward to it.

The main birding event of the trip was another stop in a part of the Budongo forest we'd not been in before. We just parked-up and walked along the road. It's probably the only place you can pick-up Puvel's Illadopsis:

A real forager of a bird, so hard to locate in the forest. We saw lots of bird on the walk, including Olive-bellied Sunbird:

Heuglin's Francolin, this photograph taken from the bus but the light was perfect so a very pleasing picture:

A new insect species, the dung beetle, here with a dung ball, which he's rolling away to impress the ladies: The source of the majority of the dung on the road (and there was quite a lot it, the road being overhung by lots of trees) was the Baboon: A Red-Bellied or Black-headed Paradise Flycatcher: not much of a song but the start of the rainy season is the equivalent trigger for breeding as is Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Another Abyssinian or Northern Ground Hornbill, male (told by the red wattling): It was getting properly hot but we were really enjoying our walk. We were picked-up and headed on to the Masindi Hotel for another early night and early start on Saturday morning, for the trip home.