They’re called Marabou Storks, left-overs from pre-history. Quite large, they stand over a meter tall, some over a meter and a half with a wingspan exceeding 3 meters. Here is Uganda they are a protected species not because their existence is threatened, but because they are so essential to Ugandan life.

Scavengers of the most intense sort, Marabou storks, Leptoptilos crumeniferus, are found throughout sub-Saharan African. But in Uganda they have achieved official status. Locals call them the Ugandan garbage collection system. Anyone killing one can go to jail, so important they are to keeping the countryside and city streets cleaned up.

Now there is plenty of litter here and no one thinks twice about tossing trash out the window of their car. But these birds feed on garbage. So toxic is their physiology that when one of them dies, no other scavengers will disturb their corpse. Not even flies! They just lie there at the place of eternal repose and decay into the soil. Read more about then here.

This photo was taken on the wall of a trash collection bin behind a building in Kampala.