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?