Today many birds were seen, but many will soon be forgotten. Yet one master African hunter is indelibly etched on every African child's mind, the Long-crested eagle.
Growing up in the Gorilla Highlands, this is the bird that children asked whether they would die one day or live forever. Its the one that village belles asked whether they would be married in the East or in the West.
With just a flick of its long crest, downwards or up, this way or that way, one's fate was sealed.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Kamushungushungu, the African bird of prophecy, the "sit and wait" hunter which waits on a perch, scanning the ground and swoops on prey with a gliding flight.
Here are its 7 behavioral facts:
1. It mostly feeds on rodents, which is a big part of its conservation story. Its pest control reputation in Agricultural Africa is only shrouded by its prophetic myth. It however also feeds on other birds, including owls and the young of other raptors, frogs and lizards, invertebrates and even fish and fruit.
2. The long-crested eagle is territorial. Thats why they dont flock.
3. The male displays during courtship, performing steep dives and also using a rocking, level display flight, calling frequently during these displays.
4. Both sexes build the nest, constructing a stick platform lined with green leaves. The nest is normally situated in the mid-canopy and very close to the trunk of a tree near the forest edge.
5. It breeds all year but most eggs are laid in July to November season. The female lays 1-2 eggs which are laid asynchronously, as much as two weeks apart.
6. The female takes most of the burden of incubating the eggs and the female begins incubation as soon as the first egg is laid which means that hatching is also asynchronous. Incubation lasts 42 days (twice that of domestic hens).
7. Interestingly, during incubation, the male provides the female with food.@Godfrey
#Earthshots
Bigodi wetland sanctuary, Uganda, 2017.
The Village Weaver is one of the most common, widespread weaver species. It is larger than most weavers, with red eyes in both sexes and a heavy black bill. The breeding male has the head mainly black, the nape, hindneck and breast below the black throat are chestnut. The back is spotted yellow. The breeding female is yellow below, and whiter on belly. The non-breeding birds are duller than the breeding female.
The Village Weaver inhabits bushy savanna, riverine woodland, wetlands, cultivated areas, rural villages, urban and suburban gardens, and villages and clearings in the forest. It is frequently associated with human habitation in west and central Africa. It is absent from arid regions, dense forests, and miombo woodland.
Its diet is seeds, including grass seeds and cultivated cereals. It is regarded as a pest in rice-growing areas, and also damages maize, sorghum and durra crops. It also feeds on fruit, nectar, and insects, such as beetles, ants, termites and their alates, grasshoppers, mantids, caterpillars, and bugs. It forages by gleaning vegetation, including tree trunks.
The Village Weaver is gregarious, being found in large flocks and in the non-breeding period joins large communal roosts.
It is highly colonial, with more than 200 nests in a single tree and colonies in excess of 1000 nests. The Village Weaver is polygynous, with up to five females simultaneously on the territory of a male, and up to seven during a season. Females may change mates in a season. Larger colonies appear to be more attractive to females, with a higher proportion of females per male.
When females enter a colony, males hang below their nest entrances while giving nest-invitation calls and flapping their wings to show the yellow underwings. The nest is spherical, sometimes with a very short entrance tunnel. The nest is woven by the male within a day, generally from strips torn from reed or palm leaves.
The male often includes a ceiling layer of broad leaves. The female lines an accepted nest with leaves, grass-heads and some feathers. Nests are suspended from drooping branches. A single male may build more than 20 nests in a season, and unused or old nests are regularly destroyed to make space for new nests. Empty nests may be occupied by other animals, including snakes, wasps, mice and bats, and nests may be used for breeding by a wide variety of species including Cut-throat Finches.
The eggs are white, pale green or blue, either plain or variably marked with red-brown speckling. Incubation is by the female only, for about 12 days. The chicks are usually fed by the female alone, but males in some parts help. Female Village Weavers recognize their own egg pattern, which is constant throughout her life, and discriminate against non-matching eggs. Nest predators include snakes, especially boomslang Dispholidus typus, monkeys and baboons, crows and raptors.
The longevity record is 14 years in the wild.
#Birdifeastafrica
#Earthshots
#Visitugandarwandatanzania.
TODAY at 1
pm EST (5 PM GMT), our in house
host, Cathleen Trigg-Jones, (www.iwomantv.com)
will do a live interview with Dr. Louise de Waal of Blood Lions, an organization that exposed the incredibly cruel practice of canned lion hunting
with their award-winning film of the same name. The focus of the interview will
be the proposed new legislation in South Africa to govern all Wildlife farming,
especially Lion farming. The interview will be followed by a Q&A. The link
to the meeting is
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84122462668?pwd=cjBCZ2tTU1NBbTcvQVdmYmo3Vytmdz09
Please
contact Cami at cami@mojostreaming.com
if you are interested in being featured or interviewed by Mojostreaming
In this two-part series, read on to learn some interesting facts about the 10 most endangered animals in the world and how we, as a race, should be more cognizant of the plight of these beautiful creatures.
10. Gorillas
Gorillas share close to 97% of their DNA with humans! They are capable of feeling emotions and even behave like us sometimes – did you know they can laugh? There are two species, the Eastern Gorilla and the Western Gorilla, and they both have two subspecies. Three out of four are Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. The only one that isn’t is the Mountain Gorilla, a subspecies of the Eastern Gorilla.
9. Rhinos
Rhinoceros comes from two Greek words Rhino and Ceros, which when translated into English mean nose horn. Human beings are almost entirely responsible for this beautiful creature nearing extinction. Poaching for their distinctive horns is their biggest threat. Three of the five species of rhinoceros are among the most endangered species in the world: the black rhino, Javan rhino and the Sumatran rhino. The Javan rhino is the closest to extinction with only about 50 left, of which most are in the Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia.
8. Sea Turtles
Hawksbill Turtles and Kemps Ridley Turtles are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Hunting is one of the biggest threats to sea turtles, with poachers targeting their eggs, shells, meat and skin. They are also at risk from habitat loss and pollution as well as climate change. Sand temperature determines the sex of hatchlings with eggs developing as females in warmer temperatures. That means even small temperature changes could skew the sex ratio of populations.
7. Saola
The Saola is one of the rarest large mammals on Earth. It was first discovered in 1992 in the Annamite Range in Vietnam. The Saola is elusive and so rarely seen it’s known as the Asian unicorn.
6. North Atlantic Right Whale
They are gentle giants that stay close to coasts and spend a lot of time at the surface skim feeding on zooplankton, all of which makes them an easy target for hunting. They were almost wiped out by hunters for their blubber and are now one of the most endangered large whales. They are now protected, and hunting is illegal, but population recovery is slow. They are only about 400 left, out of which, only 100 are breeding females. Females don’t breed for the first ten years of their life and then will give birth to a single calf every six to ten years. Vessel traffic also creates noise that interferes with their ability to communicate. Whales use sound to find mates, locate food and avoid predators, as well as to navigate and talk to each other.
Stay tuned for the Top 5 World’s Most Endangered Animal Species in the second part of the blog series. Can you guess which animals will feature on the IUCN Critically Endangered List?
*All Images for this blog sourced from Google and WWF
