This presentation will highlight the challenges and successes of the field Museum's Bird Division. The current Field Museum collaborations in the highlands of the Albertine Rift--a lush, densely populated region that extends from southern Sudan to northeast Zambia and includes some of the world's largest lakes--go back more than twenty years and have included fieldwork in Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, and Burundi. The region's forests are best known for their populations of gorillas and chimpanzees, but they also contain more than forty species of birds that are found nowhere else in the world. Field Museum curator John Bates will share his recent field experiences in eastern Congo, which includes finding a bird that hadn't been seen in nearly fifty years and having to flee the forest because of rebel activity.