The past weekend we took an excursion down to Mabamba Swamp to see the shoebills and other swamp birds. We loaded up into one of the expat staff's land cruiser and took off on the hour long journey down the dirt back-"roads" to the swamp.
*Disclaimer: two of the photos above might have been from a friend's professional camera...I'll let you decide which photos are his and which I shot with my snazzy iPhone6...
We arrived at a boat ramp in the middle of nowhere. There were some locals just hanging out fishing and chilling and out of no where our tour guides walk out of the tall grass next to the boat ramp and usher us onto the boats. It still blows my mind how things work here.
We glided along a maze of swamp for about 10 minutes surrounded by beautiful water lilies and hungry kingfishers (my favorite) until we found what we came for - the prehistoric chickens...aka the shoebill.
The shoebill was eerily motionless for about 20 minutes before in one fell swoop we saw it catch a fish (about 2 feet long) and practically swallow it whole. We also got a front row seat to watch it take off to find somewhere new to hunt.
We saw a ton of other birds and fish on the rest of our swamp cruise. My favorite was the Malachite Kingfisher. They were beautiful and so fun to watch hunt.
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