Animal of the week - week 4

Marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumeniferus)

Stuck here in Kampala the wildlife is certainly less abundant and varied than it is in Semliki. However, there are animals to be seen even in this dirty and hectic city, and perhaps the most impressive of these is the marabou stork.

These large and almost horrendously ugly birds can be seen throughout the city – on telegraph wires, crowding rubbish dumps or flying awkwardly overhead. The storks are especially numerous at Kampala’s golf course, where they move in large flocks with a lurching walk and hunched shoulders in an almost sinister fashion.

Seeing such large and unfamiliar birds flocking around the city’s rubbish is a shock to someone who is used to crows, rooks and other corvids filling this scavenging role, and at up to a metre and a half tall the storks are hard to miss!

While these grotesque birds certainly don’t add to the aesthetics of Kampala I believe that they do add to its character. The sight of the storks flying overhead with their bulbous throat sacks beneath them is certainly one that has made impression on me during my time here, and for that reason the marabou stork is my fourth ‘animal of the week’.