We rose early today to meet two researchers on ground hornbills, Kyle-Mark Middleton and Carrie Hickman, to see if we could get a glimpse of the rare bird in nearby Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. Kyle and Carrie, research partners with Rita (whom you’ve already met) and a few others, have been studying ground hornbills for several years.
The work is not easy as these birds are rare, big, nasty, and nest in tree holes or nest boxes provided by the researchers. They breed rarely, and, in this dry winter season, are very scarce. We went out knowing that our chance of seeing the bird or even hearing its call were slim, but it gave us a chance to get back in the bush again. And we did see some cool things.
First, the main players. The study object is the Southern Ground Hornbill, (Bucorvus leadbeateri)l, one of two species of Ground Hornbill in Africa.
Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled “A male Southern ground hornbill on the S21 Road west of Lower Sabie, Kruger National Park, South Africa”:
Some information from Wikipedia:
Southern ground hornbills are carnivorous and hunt mostly on the ground. Their food ranges from insects to small vertebrates. Their nests are often found in high tree cavities or other shallow cavities, such as rock holes in cliff faces These birds are a long-lived species, having lifespans in the range of 50–60 years, and up to 70 in captivity. In relation to their long lives, they do not reach sexual maturity until 4–6 years old, and begin breeding around 10 years old.Their sex can be identified by the colour of their throats: the male’s is pure red and the female’s is a deep violet-blue.
And they have an unusual breeding system, involving nonbreeding helpers at the nest and obligate “siblicide,” with two to three eggs being laid, but the parents neglecting all but the largest (and first-hatched) chick. This means that the others always die. (Nature is cruel, isn’t it?). But if the first-born chick dies, they’ll feed another so that one offspring is produced. That is, if there is no predation, yet they have many predators, ranging from leopards to civets. And the birds breed slowly, producing one chick about every three years. No wonder the species is endangered in some places (e.g., South Africa) and threatened in others. This is due largely to habitat loss. More from Wikipedia (bolding is mine):
The southern ground hornbill is an obligate cooperative breeder, with each breeding pair always assisted by at least two other birds. Experiments in captivity have found that birds without six years experience as helpers at the nest are unable to breed successfully if they do become breeders. This suggests that unaided pairs cannot rear young and that the skill gained in helping as a juvenile is essential for rearing young as an adult.
They live as long as parrots!:
In captivity, a maximum lifespan of 70 years is recorded, and it is generally believed that the life expectancy of a bird that survives long enough to fledge is as high as thirty years or more, which is comparable to that of more famously long-lived birds like the wandering albatross.
Ground hornbills are believed to reach maturity at six to seven years, but very few breed at this age. Nests are almost always deep hollows in very old trees, though there exist reports ground hornbills have on occasions nested on rock faces. One to three eggs are laid at the beginning of the wet season, but siblicide ensures that only one nestling is ever fledged. The eggs measure 73 millimetres (2.87 in) by 56 millimetres (2.20 in) and are pure white in colour but very rough in texture.
After a 40 to 45-day incubation period and an 85-day fledging period, the young remain dependent on their parents and helpers for between one and two years depending on climatic conditions, longer than any other bird. This means that ground hornbills can normally breed successfully only every third year. Triennial breeding is rare in birds: probably the only other example is the ornate hawkeagle of Neotropical rainforests.
The researchers below): Kyle and Carrie, dedicated to studying these birds. They raised the money to buy this special hornbill study truck, complete with a long ladder to climb up to the nest holes or nest boxes. (Apologies for my shadow in the picture.) Kyle is South African, and Carrie is from Scotland, but has been enamored of the animals of Africa since she was a girl. She made one trip to the Serengeti and other parts of the continent, met Kyle. Now they’re married and permanent members of Team Hornbill.
We were told beforehand that the chances were slim that we’d see any of the birds, but that was okay, and it turned out that we had a wonderful four or five hours in the park. Kyle climbed up to one artificial nest box to install a camera trap, and also went up up a baobab tree to investigate a genuine cavity where rangers had reported hornbills hanging around.
Getting up early gives you the chance to see one of the loveliest sights in the world: African sunrise in the bush:
And there was wildlife on tap, including a Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori), the largest flying bird native to Africa. It’s not easy to see these omnivores (mostly carnivores), who are shy and spend most of their time foraging on foot:
A female Greater Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) showed up:
A small, shy common duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia), bearing tiny, cute horns, peeked at us through the brush. This is a male, for females of this species are hornless:
And a big Nile crocodile lurked in the “dam” (the term for a large water hole), waiting to waylay a thirsty animal:
The geographic area is shown below. Timbavati was created in 1956 by a group of about 50 private landowners concerned about the despoliation of the land by farming and the consequent loss of wildlife. They joined together to create a park designed to restore and conserve the original flora and fauna, and have largely succeeded.
The park, still a private reserve, is right next to Kruger, where we’re going tomorrow, and in 1993 the fences between the two reserves were removed, as they have been for many parks in the area. Without fences the animals can now roam freely and widely, getting a better chance to find food, water, and mates. This is truly one of the world’s most successful conservation efforts despite the persistence of poaching (mainly rhinos and elephants).
Here’s where the park is located; it’s close to where I’m staying in Hoedspruit:
Location of Mpumalanga province in South Africa
Driving around, Kyle and Carrie checked an artificial nest box that they’d placed in a tree. Kyle carried the long ladder to the tree, climbed up to the box, and found that a genet had apparently taken residence. That genet will be expelled by a hornbill, as the aggressive birds brook no intrusion of their nests, even by eagles:
Checking inside the nest box:
They decided to put a camera trap next to the next box to monitor it over the coming months. The trap is set to take a photo when it’s activated by motion or infrared light, and takes two pictures a minute so long as there’s something to detect. It will remain functional until the summer breeding season.
Here Carrie puts together the camera, and Kyle climbed back up the tree and installed it:
A plant interlude: One of the unique botanical features of Africa is the Baobab Tree. Curiously, although they can become HUGE, they are regarded as succulents rather than true trees, though I suppose that depends on your definition of “tree”.
There are eight species of baobab in Africa, all in the genus Adansonia, but six are endemic only to Madagascar. The most common one, and one I hear is all over Kruger, is the African baobab, A. digitata. From Wikipedia:
These are long-lived pachycauls; radiocarbon dating has shown some individuals to be over 2,000 years old. They are typically found in dry, hot savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, where they dominate the landscape and reveal the presence of a watercourse from afar. They have traditionally been valued as sources of food, water, health remedies or places of shelter and are a key food source for many animals. They are steeped in legend and superstition. In recent years, many of the largest, oldest trees have died, for unknown reasons.
Here’s the first African baobab I’ve seen; it was exciting. It was also full of vultures. Look at that huge trunk!
The bark was weird:
Kyle and Carrie saw a likely cavity in the tree that, as I said, has reportedly had ground hornbills around it. Kyle, who is tall, tried to climb the ladder to photograph the hole, but he couldn’t reach it. They have a longer ladder on order:
Carrie provided me with some information about the Hornbill work, as well as some cool videos they took. First, the Ground Hornbill Project website is still under construction, but you can find some details about the project, run by the run by the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at this website.
The project is being run on a shoestring budget and a patchwork of grants and donations, so if you wish to donate to Kyle and Carrie’s work, Wild Wonderful World collects donations for it at this PayPal link. If you’re feeling birdy or conservationish, and want to help a worthy effort to save an endangered bird, you might toss a few bucks their way.
Here are a few videos from the Hornbill Project of what Carries calls “these wonderfully weird birds”. First, their strange vocalizations:
Captions from Carrie: “Interesting interaction between male and female at nest”:
“Ground hornbill destroying one of our cameras”:
“Leopard predation video” Trigger warning: nature red in tooth and claw. The leopard drops the bird at about 1:45 and the despondent parents return to find their baby is missing.
Near the baobab tree above was a lovely tree wisteria (Bolusanthus speciosus) in bloom, being pollinated by bees and other insects I couldn’t identify:
A few feet from the wisteria was the skull of an ex African Buffalo, probably taken down by lions and now singing with the Choir Invisible.
I lifted the skull, and oy, was it heavy! (Photo by Kyle).
Coincidentally, the headquarters of the park has a small but very nice museum with stuffed specimens or skeletons of animals in the park, And here is what was said to be the largest known specimen (in terms of horn-tip-to-horn-tip width) of the same species:
At first I read the label as “Buffalo Bill,” a remnant of my Howdy Doody-watching days. The horn span was, as you see, nearly five feet and three inches across.
However, Wikipedia says this:
In large bulls, the distance between the ends of the horns can reach upwards of one metre (the record being 64.5 inches 164 cm).
Buffalo Bull, above, appears to be about two inches shy of the world record.
In front of the museum is an unlabeled statue of a ranger.
I was told that this is the statue of Anton Mzima, killed in 2022 for preventing poaching:
Anton Mzima once said, “I am not shy to say that I’m a hero. Because I know that the poacher, before he shoots at the rhino, is going to shoot at me first.”
And this is exactly what happened outside his home in Edinburgh Trust near Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, on Tuesday. The courageous head of ranger services at Timbavati reserve was gunned down in cold blood. His wife was also shot and is fighting for her life.
Mzimba had worked at Timbavati for 25 years, dedicating his life to the protection of wildlife. At the 2016 Rhino Conservation Awards, he was given the Best Field Ranger award. He also served as technical adviser for the US-based Global Conservation Corps.
Mzimba’s murder left the conservation world stunned, with many friends and colleagues taking to social media to pay tribute and mourn the tremendous loss of this wildlife warrior.
. . .“The year 2008 saw Anton lifted into the leader he was meant to be — Head of Ranger Services for the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. The impact that this one man has had, not only within the wildlife space, but also touching the lives of and inspiring young children, has been simply enormous,” said the reserve.
Timbavati said Mzimba worked tirelessly in motivating the youth to become rangers, creating a vision of hope for young people to grow up respecting and protecting wildlife as he had.
“Something he shared with everyone he met, was that a field ranger should be seen as a hero, someone to aspire to become. Anton lived his beliefs, never wavered from his convictions and, above all, he remained a brave and honest man.
He was a hero! Here’s a photo of Mzima from Helping Rhinos:
Here’s a trailer of a brand-new movie about Mzima, “Rhino Man”:
Finally, a few odds and ends from Hoedspruit the last few days. Ozy has been scarce, but he’s still around. Yesterday Mama Pig came with her two young boys. We originally thought one of the babies was doomed as it choked when it ate, and was rapidly losing weight. But mirabile dictu, he’s now eating normally and has gained weight nearly equal to that of his twin brother:
A a southern red-billed hornbill (Tockus rufirostris), of which there are plenty around my lodging:
On Friday night we ate at a railroad-themed restaurant, which used to be a station on the north-south line that no longer stops in Hoedspruit, and carries not passengers but freight. The owner has lined the place with old African railway memorabilia, including this poster for the Uganda Railway. Look at all the animals converging on the train, begging to be shot!
And a memory of the bad old days of apartheid: the car for all passengers who weren’t white. You might remember that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s career as an activist, culminating in the Quit India movement that got the British out, began when, as a lawyer in South Africa, he was thrown off a train for being in the “white” car:
On the night of 7 June 1893, a young Indian lawyer, known to the world as ‘Mahatma Gandhi’, was thrown off a train at the Pietermaritzburg Railway Station. He had refused to move from a whites-only compartment. Gandhi later wrote:“I was afraid for my very life. I entered the dark waiting-room. There was a white man in the room. I was afraid of him. What was my duty? I asked myself. Should I go back to India, or should I go forward with God as my helper, and face whatever was in store for me? I decided to stay and suffer. My active non-violence began from that date”.
More later, probably several days after I get back from Kruger. I’ll be taking photos all the while, though.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. It has been fascinating and educational.
I am glad you are enjoying our fabulous wildlife – we are so fortunate that the land for the Kruger Park was set aside to conserve some of the wildlife.
Wonderful post. Thank you!
Another interesting post with great pix. Thanks.
Mzimba’s death is Very, very sad. I can only hope that the government is honest and catches the murderous bastards. I am reminded of the gunning down of Medgar Evers here in our South where collusion among the racist whites kept his murderer from being publicly identified and tried for fifty years.
I thought that the Baobab tree was unique to Madagascar. Should have known that even a deep swift ocean channel cannot contain seeds or spores over many years.
Beautiful sunrise!
Well it looked to me like the female Hornbill just wanted a little love… not so strange, really, but nobody wants me anthropomorphizing so I’ll quit.;It’s sad to see the parents returning to an empty nest, but simultaneously fascinating to watch the leopard in action. I’m sorry Kyle and Carrie lost their camera, but that video was something! I’m curious what the experts think that bird was up to. He really seemed to dislike the camera but he didn’t know what it was, right? What was that about? Really loving all these photos and narrative. Thanks, as always.
From that PoV clip of being attacked by the hornbill, I can feel why some naturalists call the avian inheritors of the dinosaurs’ world “terror birds”. All it needs is a good minor-key sound track.
Hopefully you’ll get to see some Southern Ground Hornbills while in Kruger NP. It is not surprising that they are hard to find considering that a family’s home range is often 100-250 sq. km. I hope the leopard does not learn to recognize artificial nest boxes as ‘diners’, though I guess a leopard’s home range is only likely to overlap with one or two nest boxes in any case. (Wikipedia for range sizes).
Hey Jerry, did you feel any sense of our primal beginnings with that sunrise? 😊
It invoked a movie I saw some time ago. No prizes as to which.
Nice post and enjoyed most heartily with my breakfast.
Cool. I’d never appreciated hornbills before. Learn something (at WEIT) every day.
Also, thx for the maps! Not nearly enough media include maps and I ALWAYS want them. I’m a bit of a map buff for sure, but still….
Keep enjoying the trip. I am. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Ditto about maps!!
Great post. Thanks
Really cool and interesting commentary and pix, thanks!
Thank you for sharing your adventures and absolutely amazing photos. You’re giving me the summer vacation I did not get this year!
😀
Loved this post. Really enjoyed reading about the southern ground hornbill and seeing/ listening to the videos. The antelopes are so beautiful and elegant. Great trip you are having.
OK, I have no idea if Ceiling Cat will see this, but Ceiling Cat, it has been too long. Come back. I miss you. Post again soon! Enjoy travels too, but post. I’m dying.