I personally love observing and learning more about birds. I grew up with lots of budgies, and I even had them breed, which was fascinating to watch. In fact, I learnt then how surprisingly complex and fascinating their social lives are, and how much love there is in their lives. Birds are not stupid, very, very far from it! They are adorable creatures. And with over 400 species of birds on our reserve alone, there is hardly any better place on earth to observe the diversity of birdlife than here.
Chad, who is helping out as part-time ranger at the moment (we have a full camp these days), took a beautiful shot of a “Hammerkop”, meaning, literally, “Hammer head”. I think if you look at the photo, it is very obvious where the name came from.
The Hammerkop is a very common bird, near ponds and lakes, across Africa all the way to Arabia.
But the Hamerkop’s behaviour is different to many other birds. One unusual behavior pattern is that where up to ten birds join in “ceremonies” where they run circles around each other, all calling loudly, raising their crests, fluttering their wings. Another is “false mounting”, where one bird stands on top of another and appears to mount it, but they may not be mates and do not copulate. Odd!
Hammerkops also build huge nests (the bird itself is only 470g in weight approx.), up to 1.5m in size, built with up to 10,000 sticks and strong enough to support a man’s weight. If there ever was over-engineering, then this is it.The construction is very elaborate, with a platfrom made of sticks and mud, and then a buildup on top. Fascinating.
They also love to build, as they build up to 5 nests/year, whether they are breeding or not. They’ve got to love it! 😉
