Tag Archives: Southern groundhornbills
An unusual romance between our Southern ground hornbills
In the wild, the romance between two Southern ground hornbills involves a quick courtship. The male almost immediately chooses his mate for life, and lavishes her with gifts until she accepts. For the female, it’s all about who brings her the biggest gift. For Gumpie and Skewie, our resident Southern ground hornbills, this courtship has taken a little more time. They may not exactly always be ‘romantic’ towards each other,…
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HESC’S SOUTHERN GROUND HORNBILLS RECEIVE A NEW NEST
We are lucky enough to get to take care of a breeding pair of southern ground hornbills. These birds are endangered, and so in an effort to increase the species population, the Loskop Dam Nature Reserve partnered with the Mabula Ground Hornbill project and offered us these two magnificent birds as part of a ‘breeding loan’. The two hornbills, Tarantula (male) and Lenawe (female), are now at the age where…
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Kapama the Ground Hornbill, and The Southern Ground-hornbill Action Group Release Programme
Over the course of 2014, a wild female southern ground-hornbill was spotted at HESC courting our resident male in the aviary. This wild female had managed to catch the attention of the male, causing him to snub the female he’d been paired with as a breeding partner. Ground-hornbills are very slow breeders. A pair produces just one brood of two chicks every nine years, only one of which survives. To…
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