While staying at Nkima Forest Lodge above the Mabamba Swamp and Lake Victoria southwest of Entebbe, Uganda, I went with a bird guide, William, on the slope between the lodge and the swamp. One of the birds we tracked for awhile was a speckled mousebird. There were actually several of them and I couldn't see them real well. I could tell they had a long tail and that was about it. I would leave the dirt trail we were following and track up through uneven planted agricultural fields to thickets of trees which they would hide in, then they would fly to another thicket. I finally got some photos of them after following them quite some time and exhausting myself in the process.
The speckled mousebird is about 14 inches long with a long tail that is about half of that length. It is "dull-mousy brown in overall color on the back and head (including a prominent crest). The upper part of the bill is black and the lower part is pinkish. Subspecies mainly differ in the contrast of the head, the throat color, the amount of barring and the iris color.
There are 17 subspecies. I believe we saw either subspecies jebelensis, which is found in South Sudan, northeast DRC and northern Uganda, or subspecies kiwuensis which is found in eastern DRC, central and southern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and northwestern Tanzania. The range looks more like kiwuensis, but the bird itself looks more like jebelensis.
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| Illustration of ssp jebelensis from Birds of the World. |
It is a spectacular looking bird and one of my favorite sightings of the trip.
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