Dr. Bird, Bird Watching and Birds

Soooo something prettty cool about East Africa is that they have some huge birds! None of the little crappy birds we get back home. I'm talking massive my height storks that sit on garbage dumps and could definitely take me out if we got into a fight. 

Crowed Crains in Tanzania (that I took while on Safari)

Some of the birds here are beautiful like Ugandas national bird that is called the Crowned Crain. It looks like a stork with a crown on its head and it has lovely blue wings. In kibale I saw adorable african pied wagtiails that looked like they were wagging their feather tails at you. Everywhere we go we see some crazy african birds but todays bird watch did not compare to anything bird related I had ever seen before. We went to 'bird island'. This island was shocking. We took this boat out to lake victoria and I was expecting to get off at a little island and do some hiking around.

We finally come up to the island and it is absolutely covered in black birds and white birds. Large black and white birds resting on white trees tht have lost their leaves and resting on the rocks n the rocks are covered with white bird poo and there were just thousands and thousands of birds! It all looked incredibly dramatic.

And then we saw a nile monitor aka a giant lizard crawl out from behind a shrub and slowly move towars a nest. They eat birds eggs. The scene looked like something out of a horror movie be cuase the sky was a little gloomy n the clouds were overhead and there were overgrown shrubs. And then out of knowwhere all thr birds just started flying off the island! So above us thousandfs of black birds were flapping around over ahead (I was afraid of being pooed on) and they just swooped around in a coordinated manner very creepily.

So. The rerason why there are so many birds on this tiny island?? Because they are safe. No four legged predator can swim out to bird island (except the nile monitor) so the birds are the only creatures to have colonized it! Pretty crazy. A picture is definately necessary to explain this one.

The best part about all this bird watching is that we are led by our ornithology prof named prof. Bird. I'm nor joking. Today he pointed out these cute kenyan owls that look like they have horns on their head tht were sitting on the tree just behind our rooms and then water otters outside the lunch room. He has quite the eye!!

Black birds on a white tree

And their off! Mass exodus of birds from bird island.

Anyways. Today was interesting to say the least. Thank you to Bianca for her pics (Click on them to see them full size).