1

i'm not an ornithologist, so probably cant offer the advice that nellyjk offered. and havent been to uganda either.

for me, the best place in africa i have visited so far for birds, is south luangwa national park in zambia.
on the river bank, large colonies of stork (marabou, yellow-billed, african open-billed). for me especially impressive with plenty of hippos in the river and on shore, "mixing" in with the birds.

big flocks of lilian's lovebird also impressed me a lot.

the best bird experience ever, and one of my favourite experiences in more than 20 years of travelling however was my experience on a bird hide in south luangwa. a boat with a hide on it (a boat with a "camouflage tent" build on it). with a kanu we reached the hide, mooring infront the river bank. and a large colony of carmine bee-eaters (it was very early in season, around 200 birds, later it would be more) building a nest in the river bank, looking for partner etc. absolutely amazing.

2

I've been to The Gambia and several other African countries. I AM NOT a birder. That being said, I was blown away by the numbers and variety of birds in Ethiopia (albeit it's much bigger than The Gambia), but it's the only place that impressed me for birds.

3

http://www.africanbirdclub.org/countries/Gambia/introduction

I am sure all over the Africa you can find impressive places for bird watching. For instance, to my understanding Kenya and Kakamega forest in Western Kenya are great for birders. Also other forests such as Nyungwe forest in Rwanda should be interesting.

4

Lotusland2 - I seem to remember meeting you in Victoria and going on a birding outing with you there in 2007. Does my memory serve me correctly?
Anyway, South Africa is an excellent birding destibation and, with a wide variety of biomes the variety of birds is truly amazing. Our South African bird guide books list over 900 species in the Southern African birding region, but that includes everything south of the Kunene and Zambezi rivers. Therefore including Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Southern Mozambique and everything south of that and also including some 60 odd birds that one would only see at sea, and a number of vagrants that one is not likely to come across.
In South Africa you could quite possibly see some 500 species within a reasonable length of time, but that would depend on how well you plan your trip and at what time of the year you visit this region.
Living2 (the re-incarnation of Living) has my email address, so you could contact me if you want to talk birds and birding in southern Africa. Canayjun may also still have my contact details. Unfortunately PM's are no longer available.

5

North of Gambia in the north of Senegal, near St Louis is a bird sanctuary (can't recall the name). It's the first bit of water after large expanses of desert and semi-desert inland of it, so at the certain times of year, the amount of birds is staggering. Not sure how it compares to other places in terms of variety but for sheer amount it was amazing.

6

Hi Rudik, yes, you did come birding with our natural history group in Victoria. I would love to discuss South African birding with you, and my email address which I am prepared to post publically (!!) is lotusland2 at live.ca.

Thanks to everyone for your reponses to date.