Today in History: Uganda Unites Birders in 24-Hour Bird Count

What the report says

Uganda’s first fully integrated national Big Birding Day Festival was launched on 15 October 2010, according to Nile Post. The event was organized by NatureUganda with partners including the Uganda Wildlife Authority, Uganda Tourism Board, STAR-Uganda and the Uganda Bird Guides Club. It was designed to bring birdwatchers, conservation groups and tourism stakeholders into one coordinated national exercise focused on documenting the country’s birdlife.

The festival expanded on earlier efforts by NatureUganda, which had run a pilot in 2003 and a countrywide bird count in 2009. Nile Post reported that the 2009 exercise recorded 386 species. In 2010, the format became a structured 24-hour competition that began at midnight on 15 October, with more than 40 teams working across 38 sites around the country.

Historical accounts cited in the article say participants recorded between 622 and 655 bird species. Beyond the contest itself, the initiative also functioned as a citizen-science project, generating information useful for tracking bird distribution, habitats and migratory patterns. The event helped position birding as both a conservation activity and a tourism draw, reflecting Uganda’s reputation as a major birding destination with more than 1,080 recorded species overall, including the Shoebill and species found in the Albertine Rift.