The importance of Peanut-butter!

It is this time of year that I harp on about the importance of Termites to the Hwange ecosystem.
Indeed I feel it is impossible to overstate the importance of these little peanut-butter flavoured beasties!
Just yesterday I was tracking for lions and the sun was shining. We had had almost non-stop rain for weeks and now was the termite's chance to spread wings and look for mates. The air was once again filled with Alates and the predators that eat them!

some unusual predators too......here is a Grey Hornbill taking one in the air.

There were doves and finches, sparrow weavers and white-crowned shrikes as well as kites and eagles, rollers and guineafowl.

A Yellow-billed Kite searches for termites

Hundreds of Bee-eaters cruising for peanut-butter filled termites!

This is the stuff of birder's dreams......
Get out there if you are in Southern Africa...better still, come to Hwange and see it for yourself!

                                                                       The Hwange Birder

Supersize me!!

I am always amazed at just how many termites there are in our ecosystem. There are literally BILLIONS if not TRILLIONS!

You can immediately see why it is worth all the effort for those migratory birds to fly across the world to take advantage of the abundance of "flying ants".

 

In the park yesterday we (my son and I) drove a stretch of road perhaps one or two kilometres long and in that time saw perhaps one hundred and fifty eagles! Wahlbergs, Tawnys, Batleurs, Lesser spotted eagles not to mention the dozens of francolins, guinea fowl, drongos, rollers hawking termites from the air.

 I once drove ten kilometres of road and there must have been several hundreds of eagles in the trees then. It cannot be overstressed the importance of this food-source to birds and other animals.

 

As the sun was starting to set I came across another flight of alates and this time the Amur falcons were dipping and diving to catch them in mid flight. I used the EOS5D and my small lens (70 - 300mm) and was very happy with these results.

 

Follow this link to a brilliant paper that highlights the importance of these termites to Amur Falcons: http://oo.adu.org.za/content.php?id=69

 

The Hwange Birder