Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

Description

The largest member of the hornbill famliy, the southern ground-hornbill makes its home in Gorongosa National Park’s savannas, woodlands, and grasslands. These pre-historic-looking birds are black with white flight feathers and a red wattle. You can recognize females by the blue patch on their red wattle. Males have bare facial skin and a wattle that can expand. These neck wattles are used to make booming or grunting sounds, often just before dawn, which can sound like lions roaring in the distance.

Southern ground-hornbills are carnivorous—eating lizards, frogs, snakes, snails, and insects. They are able to fly, but spend the majority of their time on the ground.  They hunt in groups by walking (instead of hopping), probing, pecking, and digging at the ground.

These birds live in cooperative breeding groups made up of a dominant pair and several  subordinate adult males.  This dominant pair successfully breeds only once every nine years, with only one surviving chick per nest.

They have established territories, and neighboring groups chase each other in aerial pursuits. Ground hornbills can live to 50 years old and are revered locally for their medicinal properties and their traditional role in producing rain. 

How to See

Southern ground-hornbills are easy to spot on a game drive as you pass by the floodplain grassland. Being such large conspicuous birds, you can easily see them digging and poking for insects and other small prey in the grass. As you are driving through the more dense woodland, they are harder to spot but often get flushed out of the dense vegetation by the sound and disturbance of the car. The noise of a group of hornbills flapping its wings can be startling but it gives visitors a nice view of them flying up to a nearby tree or shrub for protection.

You may come upon a community of as many as eight birds as they work together to eat and breed. When on a night drive, you will be able to see hornbills roosting in trees.   During the mating season, males can often be seen catching prey and handing, or rather beaking, the prey to the females as a present. 

Status

IUCN: Least Concern
Africa: Common
Mozambique: Common
Gorongosa: Common

Conservation

Although the southern ground-hornbill have decreased in numbers in other parts of Southern Africa, (including nearby Kruger National Park) due to the slow development of their young and their extremely slow breeding cycle, this bird is thriving in Gorongosa National Park.  Because of the protections that the national park provides, the species is not susceptible to poison from agricultural areas and other habitat disruptions that affect the bird’s survival in more populous regions. 

During the long civil war in Mozambique, the park’s wildlife was severely diminished.  Today, Gorongosa National Park presents an area with little competition for food and a lack of predators, particularly of the nests and the young.  We will continue to monitor the health and size of the park’s southern ground-hornbill population.