Kidepo is one of Uganda’s most spectacular parks. It harbors scenery unsurpassed in any other park in East Africa. Tucked into the corner of Uganda’s border with Sudan and Kenya, the park offers breathtaking savannah and mountain landscapes which end in a rugged horizon. A huge altitudinal range, correspondingly wide climatic conditions have evolved an extremely diverse flora. As a result the variety of animal species in the park is equally abundant including, many which are found nowhere else in Uganda.
Size: 1442 sq. km
Elevation: 900-1200m at the boarder with Sudan to 2750m at the top of Mt. Morungole.
Bird species Recorded: 480 species.
Habitat: Semi-desert scrub, open thorn scrub, open thorn bush, long and short-grass, open tree savanna, riparian woodland including Borassus and Kigelia woodland, thick “Miombo-like” woodland, montane forest and granite outcrops.
Birding in Kidepo Valley National Park
According to our records, Kidepo Valley is second only to Bwindi in bird diversity. Amongst the host of dry, eastern “specials” not found in any other Ugandan national parks are some of East Africa’s rarest and most sought after birds such as the Black-Breasted Barbet and the Karamoja Apalis.
Other species that are in KIdepo include; Golden Pipit, Ring-Necked Spurfowl, Taita Fiscal, Rufous Chatterer, Fox’s Cisticola, Yellow and Red Spotted Barbet, Fox’s Weaver, Lesser Kestrel, Pallid Harrier, Black-Winged Pranticole, White-Crested and Hartlaub’s Turaccos, Dusky-Turtle Dove, White-Bellied Go-Away-Bird, Abyssinian Scimitarbill, Jackson’s and African-Pied Hornbills, Yellow-Billed Shrike, Emin’s Shrike, Piapiac, Red-Winged Lark, Black-Rumped Waxbill.
Kidepo Valley National Park has 23 of Uganda’s 32 Somali-Masai biome species. There are also 21 Afro-tropical highland species (recorded mainly from highlands of Lonyili, Morungole, Zulia and Lomej with their characteristic mosaic of forest, savanna and thicket). Notable species are Little Rock Thrush and Brown Parisona, are in all other parks or IBAs. The site also has 16 Sudan and Guinea Savanna species, and 4 Guinea Congo forest Biome species.
