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Pafuri is located in the northernmost part of the Kruger National Park and is described as “some of the most potentially productive birding territory in South Africa” on the SANParks website.
The White-backed Vulture was “not considered to be of conservation concern until 2007, after which its threat status was successively raised, becoming Critically Endangered in 2015 following severe declines in some areas of range and likelihood of continued declines.” (HBW)
A study found that birds living in Botswana had high levels of lead in their bloodstreams during hunting season, probably coming from lead bullets used on animals killed by hunters.
Other – sadly common – reasons are the loss of habitat due to the expansion of agriculture and the use of certain veterinary drugs.
A slightly more surprising threat for vultures comes from elephants. Elephants destroy trees where vultures live and nest. Therefore, vultures often do not nest in areas with high elephant populations (origin).
Really bad developments, especially as White-backed Vulture was found to be a good avian biomonitor species – if it’s bad, chances are the environment as a whole will be bad too.
Jameson’s Firefinch is a beautiful little bird named after what was probably a very bad man, James Sligo Jameson.
According to the Eponym Dictionary of Birds (Helm, 2014), “James Sligo Jameson (1856–1888) was an Irish hunter, explorer, and naturalist. He collected in … Belgian Congo, where he died of hemorrhagic fever in Bangala … According to his obituary in The Times (8 November 1890), he witnessed a cannibal feast in the Upper Congo and was accused by Stanley of inciting this.”
A more detailed – and more frightening – description is given in birdnamesforbirds.com:
“It was probably in this context that Jameson, firmly convinced that the local people were cannibals, offered a group leader six handkerchiefs in exchange for their killing and consumption of a ten-year-old girl who bought for that purpose. The passage in which he describes this event in his journal is incredibly disgusting, both for its violence and its extreme racism”.
This could be a very good species to rename.
Of course, that’s the big topic of website quoted above: “Bird Names For Birds – Because birds don’t need eponymous or honorific common names”.
eBird describes Blacksmith Lapwings as “bold and courageous parents” because they are “known to launch defensive attacks on African Elephants”. Overconfident and stupid, more like…
Anyway, elephants seem to be the biggest threat to birds in Letaba – see the bit on the White-backed Vulture above…
The species name is derived from the repetitive metallic ‘tink, tink, tink’ alarm call that suggests a blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil (origin). Maybe the bird thinks it will drive the elephants away?
eBird provides a sympathetic description of Ring-necked dove: “A small, almost grayish-brown ‘ringneck’ pigeon with gentle, dark eyes”.
I have to admit that this identification is often based on location – Wikipedia also says “a number of Streptopelia the species are very similar in appearance, all have semi-collars and light toned fur”. Not sure if they all have gentle eyes.
Since the last time this was made fun of on my blog, the Marabou Stork couldn’t have been better.
I guess I forgot to talk about the Terrestrial Brownbul in my in-depth review of bulbuls, as I only looked for bulbuls, greenbuls, and finchbills in my photo collection when I was writing that post.
However, as the name “brownbul” suggests (not helped by “terrestrial”, which also sounds down-to-earth), this is not a bird you will proudly photograph and send to your mother when you get married. here. eBird calls it “a dull, dark brown, gregarious understory brownbul”.
German friends recently sent me a photo of a bird they had never seen before (they pretend to be interested in birds today in a desperate attempt to impress me). I could tell them right away that it was a Egyptian Goose – an invasive species in Germany but not in Kruger.
HBW states that “even in their native African range, they are considered pests because of their willingness to eat farmers’ crops and their spread on golf courses”. I have to say, destroying golf courses is definitely something I hold in their favor.
Sometimes it still amazes me how much scientific work is done to prove that the bleeding is obvious (well, I guess that’s what all the free work of Ph.D. students can use). For example, this study Shown Malachite Kingfisher spend more time hunting in locations with more fish.
In the language of a scientific paper, it is pronounced as “Fish density has become the most important ecological parameter”. It looks a little more impressive, I guess.
If you are a bit stupid or inexperienced Gray Go-Away Bird, you will probably build your nest in the mistletoe. A study found that survival for nests in mistletoe was 22.1% compared to 90.5% for nests in other substrates over a 50-day nesting period.
Actually, the study doesn’t actually call these mistletoe nesters stupid – that’s a bit of a bummer, apparently – but instead states that “nesting in mistletoe may be maladaptive”. Somehow this seems like a good moment to mention the Darwin Awards but as far as I know, they are only given to humans, not to animals.
Obviously, in some regions where Cattle Egrets do not primarily interact with cattle but with other animals, their name in the local language changes accordingly. So, you will have a “Hippopotamus Egret”, a “Rhinoceros Egret” or an “Elephant Bird” (origin).
There are about 16 species of birds called robin-chat. To me, the hyphen still seems to suggest that these birds were made from parts of two different birds, which is obviously nonsense… This is a White-throated Robin-Chat.
In Pafuri, the Red-backed Shrike is probably the species that looks closest to some species I am familiar with from Shanghai.
Also, I learned that the word “shrike” is from the Old English scric, shout“shriek”, a reference to the shrill call of a bird (source: Oxford English Dictionary).
I guess this is the wind, not a highly individualistic hairstyle.
Helmetshake by Retz is one of 8 helmetshrike within the larger Vangidae family – apparently, a family that evolved from a species based in Madagascar.
Typical for the wonderful world of ornithology, this is not a shrike. And I don’t see many helmets either.
The person who Helmetshake by Retz is named for – the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius – was discredited for his belief that mankind came from different races. He also laid the groundwork for some pseudoscience – phrenology – “the study of the conformation of the skull as indicative of mental abilities and personality traits” (Brittanica).
Therefore, in 2015, the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography stopped awarding the Anders Retzius Medal (origin). Why a poor bird had to wear his name was not immediately obvious to me.
In better pictures than this one, the Eastern Nicator looks really interesting.
My excuse comes from a website on South African birds: “Shy and skulking, the Eastern Nicator is more often heard than seen and is certainly not the kind of bird that will sit out in the open for all to see and photograph. … It is often overlooked in the habitat it frequents”
That is very different from Rufous-crowned Roller, a showboat with a penchant for sitting prominently in the open. It is the heaviest of the rollers in Africa.
Somewhere outside the Periodical System of Birds, there is a family named Malaconotidae (Bushshrikes and Allies), which includes the genus Tchagra and there species. Brown-crowned Tchagra.
Try not to confuse this species with the word chakra – as it turns out, it is quite scientific website“The seven chakras are the body’s main energy centers. You’ve probably heard people talk about ‘unblocking’ their chakras, referring to the idea that when all our chakras are open, energy can flow freely through them, and harmony exists between the physical body, mind, and spirit.
To clarify: Tchagra = Bird species = Unblockable. Chakra = Energy Center of the Body = Can be unblocked. Mixing these two is dangerous for you and possibly for the bird.
On zooniverse.com, I found the following short entry (without further context): “It’s a #starling, either Burchell’s Starling o The Starling of Meves.”
That was a relief as there were problems identifying the images below. I think it might be these two The Starling of Meves …
… while I’m not sure at all about them.
Incidentally, two are named after European scientists – one after the German ornithologist Friedrich Wilhelm Meves, the other after the English naturalist William John Burchell. The Wikipedia biography the latter contained the slightly grim statement that “Burchell died at Fulham in 1863, having ended his own life by hanging himself in a shed in his garden, after a non-fatal attempt commit suicide by shooting”.
Of course, Pafuri also has the usual useless non-birds that distract birders from what’s important. As is customary on my blog, I will politely refrain from commenting on their many shortcomings compared to the avian world.
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