Rare Shoebill Bird Lands on Tourist Boat in Uganda

On 2025-11-13, a group of tourists in Uganda experienced an extraordinary encounter with one of the world's most unique birds. A towering shoebill, a species often described as a "relic from the dinosaur age," landed directly on their boat while they were exploring the Mabamba Bay, a popular birdwatching destination.

The massive shoebill, standing nearly 5 feet tall and boasting an enormous beak, perched on the small wooden vessel, leaving the tourists gobsmacked. In the now-viral footage, one tourist can be seen attempting to take a selfie with the unflinching bird, which remained perfectly still just inches away.

Despite their intimidating appearance, with wingspans reaching 8 feet and beaks up to 24cm long and 9cm wide, shoebills are generally calm around humans. Thankfully, the shoebill in Mabamba Bay showed no aggression, simply standing on the boat and staring intently with its huge eyes before eventually taking flight again.

Encounters this close are exceptionally rare, even in one of the world's best places to see these prehistoric-looking birds. Shoebills are more closely related to pelicans and herons than to the storks they superficially resemble, and fewer than 8,000 remain in the wild across tropical central-eastern Africa, with the species classified as Vulnerable on the global conservation red list.