T HIS IS BEING written the night before I fly to Uganda in search of the Sitatunga. When I explain my holiday plans people either think I am joking or am in severe need of psychiatric treatment but there is an animal called the Sitatunga and Uganda is one of the places to catch up with it. Having missed out on finding it a few years back in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, another Sitatunga hotspot, I am hoping that Lake Victoria will prove more successful.

So what is it? The Sitatunga is a highly aquatic species of antelope, males some 90 cm tall at the shoulder and weighing in at just over 100 kg, females slightly smaller. The bucks carry shallowly spiraled horns around 60 cm in length. They are a fairly uniform dull brown with faintly striped flanks and marked with white around the face. The female can be bright orange and much more strongly marked with white stripes along the flanks. The feet are remarkably elongated and splayed, an adaptation to their marsh habitat. And my fascination with this impressively named herbivore? It is one of the few species of larger herbivore I have yet to see in Africa. Others include the elusive Bongo and the very rare Hirola — different animals that will require different trips.

The last 200 years have not been kind to antelopes in Egypt; in fact they have been downright rotten, as they have all been driven to extinction.

I know of no depictions of the Sitatunga from the Ancient Egyptian tombs and friezes and it does not get a mention in Patrick Houlihan’s The Animal World of the Pharaohs which is in some respects odd. The dense stands of papyrus and the labyrinthine swamps and marshes of the ancient Nile Delta would seem to have been perfect Sitatunga habitat and we know that the Nile was a corridor from sub-Saharan Africa as hippos and the Nile Crocodile are well represented in these scenes — indeed both were deified as Taweret and Sobek respectively. Perhaps it is a moot point anyway.

The last 200 years have not been kind to antelopes in Egypt; in fact they have been downright rotten, as they have all been driven to extinction. The Bubal Hartebeest may have survived to the late 1800s. It had a long, narrow face and very distinctively shaped horns. Its disappearance predates the widespread use of firearms, and climate change was probably a major factor in its demise. It was essentially a savanna antelope that found the rising temperatures and expanding desert too much. The other two, the Scimitar-horned Oryx and the Addax, were hunted to extinction, having largely disappeared by the 1930s. Ibrahim Helmy, though, has one possible record of the Oryx from 1975.

On a happier note, look out for newly fledged bee-eaters on power lines and telephone wires. Two species breed in the delta and valley. The Little Green Bee-eater is a common resident and is little and green, the green being relieved by a black half collar and a black bandit mask through the eyes. The Blue-cheeked Bee-eater is a larger bird, it too is mostly green but with a yellow throat and pale blue above and below the bandit mask. It is a summer visitor that actually chooses to come here to breed during the hottest part of the year. Most bee-eaters, and all the Egyptian species, have elongated central tail feathers but the youngsters can be told from the adults by the fact these feathers are shorter and often scruffier than in mature birds. Little Greens especially feed in an almost flycatcher style, making aerial sorties from a regular perch for their insect prey.

Cuckoos are renowned for their parasitic breeding habits, laying their eggs in the nest of other unrelated and often much smaller species. One of Egypt’s cuckoos, the very scarce Great Spotted Cuckoo, an impressive crested, long-tailed bird some 40 cm long, follows this pattern. It lays its eggs in the nests of birds such as the Hooded Crow.

Egypt’s other breeding cuckoo is the Senegal Coucal. Coucals buck the normal cuckoo trend in building their own, albeit rather scruffy, nest and rearing their young in conventional fashion. It is a highly distinctive bird, rich chestnut above, cream below with a long black tail and a glossy black cap. While glimpses can be hard to get, its sonorous call, a rising and falling ‘hoo hoo hoo hoo ’ is one of the distinctive sounds of the northern countryside. There are scattered breeding records farther south and it is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa — indeed I expect to catch up with it in Uganda along with the similar but larger Blue-headed Coucal and their enigmatic relative the Yellowbill.

In the desert, the young of the White-crowned Black Wheatear will be fledging and creating confusion among the inexperienced birders. It is not unreasonable to expect a White-crowned Black Wheatear to be black with a white crown. The first winter birds lack this feature though, their heads generally being uniform black. There is a Black Wheatear in North Africa that is similarly marked but the Black Wheatear is at best an extremely rare vagrant to the country, indeed Goodman and Meininger in their Birds of Egypt rejected the Black Wheatear from the Egyptian list.

Possibly my favorite summer haunt is St. Catherine’s where the altitude ensures cooler weather and wadis channel refreshing mountain breezes. At this time of year, the orchards will be full with ripening fruit and one avian denizen is not above taking what it obviously considers its share. The Chukar is a boldly patterned partridge with beautifully barred flanks in black, mauve and cream. Covies of this bird can be seen along the crags and slopes even around the monastery itself. If you don’t see it, Chukars have the good grace to announce their presence by calling out their name, variations on a general theme of ‘chk chk chkAR’ If only all birds were so accommodating.

On one memorable occasion in summer, I was strolling down Wadi Arbaieen when I saw a stunning male Black-headed Bunting resplendent in brilliant yellow and black. He was singing his heart out but probably to no avail, as he was highly unlikely to find a mate. He was way off base. At that time of year he should have been some way to the north and east in the Levant or Turkey.

Anyway, the Sitatunga beckons. Twenty-four hours from now I will be prowling the Entebbe Botanical Gardens in search of it and a host of supporting cast such as the Red-headed Malimbe, Purple-throated Cuckooshrike, Siffling Cisticola and the Splendid Glossy Starling. Splendid indeed!  et