The one where I don't get no respect

Which is a good thing. According to the East Africa edition of Watching Wildlife,

"territorial male [hippopotami] back up and shower each other with urine and faeces as a sign of respect...".

They also

"mark territories and grazing trails by spraying dung and waving their paddle-shaped tail at the same time, spraying it all over the place..."

The book goes into more details, which you, gentle reader, will thank me for skipping.

My first weekend here, Paige had Monday off for Presidents Day, so we went to visit the Lake Mburo National Park, a small park about 150 miles southwest of Kampala (and on the other side of the world--we're 20 miles north of the equator, the park is in the south!). It's a pretty area, but, as PABs (Phil Anderson Bowen; Paige Anderson Bowen) often say, "we live in a zoo." So we were basically there to see wildlife, and we did.

We hired an armed guide (mandatory) to take a walk in the woods. We saw African (obviously) buffaloes, zebras, and a whole bunch of antelope--waterbucks, bushbucks, impala, duikers, oribis. One impala had just lost an antler in a fight that day—he had one antler, and one bloody stump. Also mongeese, the aforementioned hippos (though just in the water), and warthogs, which look exactly like Pumba from The Lion King.

We didn't see any monkeys on our walk; those were hanging around the snack bar. There was an olive baboon, and there were lots of vervets--the males have very distinctive bright blue or turquoise scrota. (I guess this post can't be in a children's book anymore...)

And...birds. It's pretty hard to be around here and not be amazed and fascinated by the birds. The standard work is Stevenson & Fanshawe's _Birds of East Africa_, and the PABs and lots of others have copies and many guidebooks include references to the proper pages when discussing avian life. We took a boat trip on the lake Monday morning, along with some Dutch doctors who came to Uganda specifically to look at birds and a Japanese boy who never spoke and wore serious mountaineering boots. We saw African (obviously) fish eagles, pied and malachite kingfishers, green-backed herons, and a African (obviously) wattled lapwing.

The big find was the African (obviously) finfoot--it's apparently not easy to find, but we saw several, including a family with mom feeding her two kids while dad hovered (well, floated) nearby.

Most of my animal pictures aren't great, so here's a picture of me at the equator instead.




sg