ZIMBABWE | GROUND HORNBILL
SOUTHERN GROUND HORNBILL (Bucorvus Leadbeateri)
[ WRITER: Sean Hind (Safaris I Can See) ] [ PHOTO: Sean Hind / National Geographics ]
It is 4:45am in the morning, I am in the middle of Hwange National Park, there is a booming sound in the distance, is it a lion? No it’s the deep booming sound of a pair of southern ground hornbills announcing the start of a new day. These birds are very territorial and the calling is to advertise their territory and is done mostly at dawn or early morning when the air is still cool and allows for the sound to travel further, sometimes as far as three kilometres. It is always a great sight to come across a group of ground hornbills slowly moving through the bush foraging. These large black birds are often found in groups of three to five birds, but sometimes up to nine birds or more. They are often referred to as turkey buzzards because of the way they look and walk around but it has no close genetic affiliations to either, in fact the genus Bucorvus literally means huge crow.
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TRAVEL & LEISURE | Jan - April 2022
