Road kill and injuries

After finding a Striped Kingfisher dead on the road recently I have started making a point of stopping and identifying any road-killed birds I see between the office and home. To put it into perspective, it is only about 12km of tar with maybe forty or fifty vehicles per day! By no means a busy road!

Over the last 3 months, however, I have found a Southern Carmine Bee-eater Merops nubicoides, a Striped Kingfisher Halcyon chelicuti , a White Helmet-shrike Prionops plumatus , a White-browed sparrow weaver Plocepasser mahali, a Senegal coucal Centropus senegalensis. Quite alarming for a seemingly "quiet back-road" don't you think?

Just last week, on the main Bulawayo - Vic falls road I found an injured Yellow-billed Kite Milvus aegyptius. I picked him up and have taken him home (bouyed by the success of "Victor the Vulture" - see earlier posts) to see if we can help him out. He is now eating pilchards and scrambled eggs and drinking from a pipette. My fingers are crossed for him!

The Hwange Birder