Are you a birder and planning a birding safari? Then I can say Mabamba swamp is your ideal destination and your perfect paradise. Mabamba swamp located in West Entebbe is a home for the elusive Shoe bill stork and it is the best and the most convenient destination to catch sight of it.
You can access this popular place either by road or water from Entebbe and by road from Kampala. It is approximately a 2 hour drive from Entebbe/ Kampala by road to Mabamba swamp for your shoe bill tour. Mabamba is a sought-after destination because of the shoebill stock. Visitors here cannot miss watching this peculiar looking feathered beauty.
At the swamp you use a small motorized canoe through the papyrus reeds, then to a flat grassy wetland and I am telling you the view here is stunningly beautiful and green. It is here in the wetland that you can be able to sight a number of shoe bills searching for prey.
The best time to visit this place is early in the morning because the shoe bill storks always spend long periods of time in the morning waiting to catch their prey. They can wait for even an hour or more until they sense their prey’s movements and then they unexpectedly move with remarkable speed.
If you are planning a full day visit to this place, you need to pack your lunch, wear warm clothes (maybe a long sleeved warm shirt and trousers) since it sometimes gets really cold at the swamp, pack a light rain jacket just in case it rains, a pair of binoculars to be to clearly see the birds, insect repellant, sun glasses in case it gets sunny and a hat.
Apart from the shoe bill stock, you can also have an opportunity to see other birds here like the Swamp flycatcher, pied kingfisher, African water rail, African jacana, Pallid Harrier, Papyrus Gonolek, White-winged Warbler and the Blue Swallow Common moorhen, Blue Breasted Bee-eater, Squacco heron, African purple swamp hen, Winding cisticola, lesser jacana, White-faced whistling duck, Goliath Heron and many others.