Cat's Cradle

Recently we had to make an emergency trip to one of our release sites. At the beginning of December we released 5 birds at a site an hour or two away from Mabula. When released, each bird had a tail transmitter that we could use to track them. With a frightening regularity, the transmitters began to be shed, and we finally received a call saying the last transmitter had come off. So we rushed out there in an attempt to capture at least two of the birds to put on new transmitters. This turned out to be a frustrating endeavor. Ground Hornbills are smart birds, so if you capture them with one method, it won’t work a second time.  So we would drive, searching for the birds, and once we found them, would withdraw a short distance, set up the capture net, and prepare our wiles for luring them in.

After two days of trying with no success, the birds vanished. They had apparently caught on to our scheme to entrap them, and decided to hide. We spent the next four days fruitlessly looking for a group of five 4-kilogram-birds. You’d think it wouldn’t be so complex to find a group that size.  Unfortunately they have proven that thought to be fallacious.

But despite not achieving our goal with the birds, we did manage to see some pretty cool stuff while we were there. Here are some pictures! See the cat? See the cradle?