Wednesday August 28
We awoke to pouring rain today. After breakfast we set out on a nature and birding walk near where we went gorilla trekking on Sunday. It was very misty, creating challenges for the photographer. The weather cleared later in the morning, and by 11:00 we could see some blue sky.
The first part of the walk was through a section of former farmland that was brought back into the park 7 years ago. While grass and shrubs have recovered, the introduced clumps of bamboo have not thrived— because the project that planted them used lowland hybrid bamboo rather than the mountain strain that gorillas love to eat. It was sad to see such a large effort yield such poor results. We crossed into existing potato fields, and then back into the “old” part of the park. We were reminded of how hard the people work here; raising potatoes is hard work to being with, but these farmers have to have someone guarding the fields 24 hours a day to protect from daytime raids by golden monkeys and nighttime raids by buffalo and elephants. Somehow these large animals get past the 4-foot high stone wall delineate park boundary.
We basically followed wherever we heard bird calls, which took us past the same location where we first saw the gorillas on Sunday. They weren’t there today, but on our way back down we did see a golden monkey in the bamboo forest. We also saw a number of now familiar species, and a few new ones.
Pictured: African Green Pigeon, looking across the new part of the park towards the potato fields, Rwenzori Batis, Albertine Boubou, Streaky Seedeater
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