The Plains Zebra
(Equus Quagga)
The zebra a one of the oldest members of the horse family. They live in family units or harems of several mares with their single offspring and a dominant stallion. They are often found in the company of giraffes and antelopes. Lions and spotted hyenas are their chief predators.
Black-on-White or White-on-Black…What’s with those stripes?
Here are the most prevalent theories:
Stripes are regional, unique to the individual, and vary according to regional temperatures. The higher the temperature, the more stripes. In cooler regions, the stripes are fewer, thinner and more faint, often with no striping on the legs.
The skin of a heavily striped zebra can be 5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than a non-striped mammal in the same region…deflecting 70% of the heat that surrounds its body. The differential between the black (heat-absorbing) stripes and the (less heat-absorbing) white stripes causes small eddies of air to swirl and cool the zebra’s skin.
Disease-carrying, biting horse flies and tsetse flies don’t like stripes!
Those distinctive stripes cause a crazy optical illusion when zebras heard together, and can actually act as camouflage - turning into a big zig-zagged - blended striped blob, thereby confusing lions and hyenas.
A group of zebras is a: dazzle, herd, zeal, crossing or a cohort of zebras.
Southern Ground-Hornbill
(Bucorvus Leadbeateri)
3rd row, 1st, 2nd, 3rd photos
There are approximately 250 pairs of the uncommon, majestic, rare and vulnerable Southern ground-hornbills in Kruger National Park. These huge, black-faced, (with vivid red patches of bare skin), hornbills, are the largest of all hornbills with a massive bill – and favor clearings in open woodland, and forage on small animals such as squirrels, hares, lizards, snakes, tortoises, insects, beetles, frogs and snails. They rarely drink and require a savanna habitat with old, large trees with deep hollows or cavities for nesting and dense but short grass for foraging.
Females can weigh as much as 10 pounds while the males can weigh up to 14 pounds with a wing chord as long as 24 inches.
Their call is a deep booming 4-note duet (“oooom”) - usually in early morning. Southern ground hornbill groups are very vocal with contact being made by calls in chorus which can be heard at distances of up to 1.8 miles allowing each group to maintain its territories, which can be as large as 40 square miles.
The Southern ground-hornbill lives in family groups of up to ten individuals. One to three eggs are laid at the beginning of the wet season but siblicide ensures that only one nestling is ever fledged. They reach maturity at six to seven years but do not breed at such a young age nor do they breed every year.
In the hollow of an old tree, the male builds a nest of mud surrounding the female. He makes a small hole for air and feeding. The female loses her feathers which become the nest for her one to three eggs. The male lives in either the same or a nearby tree and feeds his family for approximately four months. The period of parental dependence following a 40 to 45-day incubation period and an 85-day fledging period is between one and two years depending on climatic conditions before young are independent of parents and helpers, which is the longest of any bird. This means that ground hornbills can normally breed successfully only every third year. Triennial breeding is extremely rare in birds. They have been reported to live as long as 70 years.
Kruger is the best location to view the rare Southern Ground-Hornbill.
A group of birds is called:
(Chicks) - Brood, Clutch
(Flight) - Flight
(Game) - Volary, Brace, Plump, Knob
(Ground) - Flock, Dissimulation
(Sea) - Wreck