Black-Headed Weaver

Breeding male black-headed weavers have a greenish-yellow mantle and back plumage and the pale underpart plumage is suffused with a variable amount of chestnut. The iris is dark brown. The female and non-breeding male do not have the black head and resemble a female masked weaver, except they have dark eyes and a darker bill. There are five subspecies and it appears I saw ssp dimidiatus which is found in northeastern DRC, Uganda, southwestern Kenya, northwestern Tanzania, southeastern Sudan and western Eritrea. Dimidiatus has rich chestnut underparts with yellow restricted to the belly. 

Found on the hill between Nkima Forest Lodge and the Mabamba Swam on Lake Victoria in Uganda. It was with another bird that has given me fits and which I now think is a female red-headed weaver. 

Illustration of ssp dimidiatus from Birds of the World. 

I am really struggling with the weavers as there are many species and the same species can look very much different from each other. 

Range from Birds of the World. It does show it belongs on the western edge of Lake Victoria in Uganda. 

Finch's Agama

Agama lizards are some of the coolest lizards in the world. On our trip to Uganda in July of this year we ran into another species, Finch's agama (Agama finchi). It was quite common and we saw it in many different places. It was all over the grounds where we stayed at Pakuba Lodge in Murchison Falls NP, very prevalent at and near the boat dock near Paraa along the White Nile near Murchison Falls, and also very prevalent on the large rocks where we saw lots of hyrax near the Apoka Airport in Kidepo Valley NP. 

The first five photos were all taken in Murchison Falls NP. The fifth photo is of a female. 

This photo, and the next one, were taken in Kidepo Valley NP.

It is referred to as "small" in Wikipedia which would come as a surprise to anyone from the U.S. where the only lizards larger would probably be chuckwallas and gila monsters. It has a yellowish head, fore-neck and the upper three-fourths of the tail and the rest of the body is grayish black. It is found in the Central Arican Republic, Chad, the DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. 

Agama is a genus of lizards that includes at least 37 species in Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, where most regions have at least one species. Colors differ between species, between genders, according to mood and females are usually less colorful. 

I previously posted on the Mwanza flat-headed rock agama (post on June 3, 2014) which we saw in Masai Mara NR in Kenya and Serengeti NP in Tanzania. The male is a pinkish-red and blue and I have photos of both the colorful male and very plain dark female. 

I am confused about the other Agama species I've seen. I did a post on the red-headed rock agama, also known as the common agama and rainbow agama (Agama agama), by which it is known on iNaturalist (post on June 4, 2014), which I saw in Ghana in Elmina, Cape Coast Castle and at our Coconut Grove hotel outside Elmina. I actually caught one at the outside restaurant we were eating at in Elmina and held it for a minute or so before letting it go. It looks quite a bit like Finch's agama and that's what I thought the Finch's was until notified otherwise by our guide. iNaturalist uses the term rainbow agama, but the only identifier to all of my photos of it on iNaturalist has said it is Peter's rock agama (Agama picticauda) which is also known as the redhead agama. I don't have enough information to make my own informed decision and I don't know anything about the identifier, but the photos I've seen look for like Agama agama to me. Whatever it is, these are all very cool lizards. 

Oribi

The oribi is a small antelope we saw in Uganda in July of this year. We saw it in both Murchison Falls NP and Kidepo Valley NP but I quit taking photos of it and so only have photos from Murchison Falls. 

It has a slightly raised back, a long neck and limbs and a glossy yellowish to rufous brown coat with a white chin, throat, underparts and rump. Males have thin straight horns and females do not have horns. There are 8 subspecies and I believe I saw ssp montana which is found from northern Nigeria eastward into Ethiopia and southward into Uganda. 

Range map from Wikipedia.

It is highly sporadic in its distribution. Murchison Falls NP, Kidepo Valley NP and Lake Mburo NP are the three national parks in Uganda that are listed as having them. 

It reminded me of the dik-dik. We saw Kirk's dik-dik (post on August 26, 2014) in Serengeti NP. I wanted to compare the oribi with the dik-dik and in an article titled, "Top 12 smallest antelope species in Africa" the dik-dik was listed as third smallest and the oribi was listed as eleventh. When I compare my photos of the two, the dik-dik clearly looks substantially smaller. The steenbok which we saw (very briefly) in Hwange NP in Zimbabwe (post on June 15, 2018) was listed as ninth. Most of the other small antelope on this list were ones I'd never heard of. The variety of wildlife in Africa is astonishing. 

Lelwel Hartebeest

The lelwel hartebeest, also known as the Jackson's hartebeest, the name it was called by our guide William in Uganda, is the third of eight subspecies of hartebeest we've seen. We've previously seen Coke's hartebeest in Nairobi NP in Kenya and Serengeti NP and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania (July 23, 2014) and the red hartebeest in Etosha NP in Namibia (July 31, 2018).  It is an antelope native to the Central African Republic, Chad, the DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. There has been a drastic population decrease since the 1980s and now most are confined to protected areas. 

These are photos of the lelwel hartebeest in Murchison Falls NP:

These are photos from Kidepo Vallley NP:

I think of them as the sentinel of the plains. It seems like they are always standing on a little hill or knob and surveying the surroundings. 

This is a range map of the hartebeest subspecies from Wikipedia. I've seen caama (the red hartebeest - tan in Namibia); cokii (Coke's hartebeest  - dark green in Kenya and Tanzania); and lelwel (Lelwel hartebeest - pea green in Uganda). 

Red-Tailed Monkey

In July 2025 we stayed at Nkima Forest Lodge on a forest-covered hill overlooking the Mabamba Swamp on Lake Victoria. We stayed in a little cabin surrounded by tall trees. One morning our granddaughter was out at first light with a camera taking photos of a red-tailed monkey that was in the trees around our cabin. She has great photos, the issue with them was the poor lighting, so I've lightened them up as much as I reasonably can. I tried taking photos of my own later and had a little better lighting, but not good cooperation from the monkey. The first two photos are my granddaughter's and the last three are mine. 

The red-tailed monkey is named for the red coloration of the tail's underside, which increases from the base of the tail to the tip. It has a white nose and large elastic cheeks used for storing food. They have dark dray or black body fur. The tail can be as long as 35 inches, twice the length of the body in some monkeys. It helps the monkey to balance. 

It is part of the guenon family and is also known as the red-tailed guenon or Schmidt's guenon. 

Range map from Wikipedia.

Common Patas Monkey

The common patas monkey is also known as the hussar monkey. We saw them in Kidepo Valley NP in northern Uganda. We saw them several times, first relatively near the Apoka Airport, and later on our drive out toward the Kidepo Valley. 

The common patas monkey was originally thought to have subspecies, but it is now considered to be monotypic, meaning there are no subspecies. It is found from western Africa to eastern Africa and those found in the west have black noses and those in the east have white noses, part of the reason for breaking it into subspecies. However, it was discovered that noses could change from black to white in females during pregnancy and that some of the eastern monkeys in Kenya did not have white noses. 

Common patas monkey range from Wikipedia.

A hussar was a member of a class of light cavalry, originally from the Kingdom of Hungary during the 15th and 16th centuries. They had a distinctive dress which included a busby fur hat.

Archduke Stephen of Austria, Palatine of Hungary in hussar style uniform with the busby hat. From Wikipedia "Hussar".

I assume that the reddish brown fur on the top of the patas monkey's head, which looks like it could be a hat, gives it this nickname. See my photo below. 

It is the fastest running primate, reaching speeds of 34 mph, and males have the longest canine teeth of all African long-tailed monkeys. The New England Primate Conservancy notes that they have thick red-brown hair that turns white around the legs and belly and gets darker around the shoulders. They have dark faces, framed by white hair and have white mustaches (the mustaches of males tend to be thicker and longer). The crown of the head is  a darker reddish-brown and they have thick, mane-like hair, around the neck and shoulders. Males have a blue scrotum. Some have white noses, others have black noses. 

Additional photos:

Southern (South African) Giraffe

In June 2018 we visited Kadizora Camp in the Okavanga Delta of Botswana. My last post summarized the new science on giraffe identification and I realized that I'd not dealt with the classification of giraffe's I'd seen in Botswana. This article from Giraffe Conservation Foundation notes that Botswana is home to the newly designated southern giraffe, one of four giraffe species, and that it has both subspecies: the Angolan giraffe ssp in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and western private farms; and the South African giraffe ssp in the northern and eastern regions, including Chobe NP, Moremi Game Reserve and the Okavanga Delta. 

The South African giraffe has "dark, somewhat rounded patches 'with some fine projections' on a tawny background color. The spots extend down the legs and get smaller.  The median lump of males is less developed." 

These are photos I took of giraffes in the Okavanga Delta:

Giraffes have a pair of ossicones on the parietal bones of the skull. Males also have a single median ossicone on the frontal bone that is larger in northern giraffes and smaller in southern giraffes. The lump between the eyes, above, is the median lump or ossicone. 

Closer view of spots.