Month by month
Queen Elizabeth in May
May is the recovery month. Rainfall falls by almost half from April, the migrants leave, and the low-season rates run for one more month before the calendar turns.
If you only want the answer
May averages 175 mm over eleven rain days, down from April's 339 mm over eighteen, which is a genuine improvement while still being the fifth wettest month of the year. It is the last month of the reduced Aerolink schedule and the last of the April to May low-season rates, and it is when the Palearctic migrants head north.
Queen Elizabeth weather in May: half of April, and still four months' worth of June
One hundred and seventy-five millimetres over eleven rain days is a real step down from April, and it is worth being honest about what that step actually means. May still carries more rain than June, July, January, February and August put together, which come to 163 mm. Seven fewer rain days than April is the number a visitor feels; the total is still firmly in the wet half of this park's year.
Afternoons sit at 27.2 degrees and nights at 19.5, so the heat is mild. The grass is long by now after two months of rain, which is the part of the green season that genuinely costs you sightings. Smaller antelope disappear into it and the open Kasenyi plains stop reading as open.
The last month of the thin schedule
May is the third and final consecutive month in which Aerolink runs only A8 111/112, one flight each way per day, before the full schedule returns in June. November is the fourth month with the same restriction, standing on its own later in the year.
That makes May an awkward month to arrive in and a straightforward month to leave. If you are combining Queen Elizabeth with Bwindi, the road remains the sensible plan: Buhoma sits roughly 26 km from the Ishasha sector, about one and a half to two hours in practice over murram that climbs and drops through the hills, and the standard route from Buhoma to Mweya runs 158 km straight through the Ishasha sector.
The migrants go, and the rates follow in June
The Palearctic waders, gulls and terns that arrive from September are in the park through April, so May is when the migrant component of the bird list thins out. What remains is the resident list of over 600 species, the longest of any protected area in Uganda, which is hardly a poor consolation. Birding and day walks cost $25 per person, the same in May as in any month.
On price, May is the last month of the low season at Pumba Safari Cottages, Topi Lodge and Elephant Plains, and the last of the green season at The River Station and Honey Bear Bush Camp. From June the rates start climbing towards the July to September peak while the rain is falling away, which is why late May and June sit next to each other with very different numbers on both sides of the ledger.