Below: Flock of redbilled queleas perching in a thorn tree, Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana.
Quelea flocks can number in the thousands — and tens of thousands in breeding colonies — resembling columns of swirling smoke in flight, sometimes even darkening the sky above.
Breeding males are distinctive with their black faces and bright red bills and legs but out of breeding season are more drab, with both non-breeding males and females having red bills and legs, as in the pictures above.
Caption: Redbilled queleas (Quelea quelea) weave aerial patterns as they swoop through the surrounding trees in a dense flock, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia.
Caption: Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) male, close-up of head and neck and, below, extreme close-up of ground hornbill’s eye, showing the spectacular eye lashes that these birds are blessed with, Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Camera: Canon EOS 450D (Canon Rebel XSi 12.2MP); Lens: Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM; Focal Length: 400mm; Shutter speed: 1/640; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.
The ground hornbill is a large, black, turkey-sized bird standing about 90 to 130cm (around 3ft) tall and weighing from 3.5 to 4.2kg (males) and 2.2 to 3.2kg (females). The wingspan is around 1.2 to 1.8m, but the wings are not often used as these hornbills are mainly terrestrial, only taking off in flight when disturbed, or when going to roost in a tree.
The face is bright red, as is the throat pouch. Females are smaller, with a blue central patch on the pouch. The ground hornbill has a casque on the top of the large, dark bill, although it’s not as prominent as on other hornbill species.
These easily-identified birds usually forage in groups of four to 10, walking slowly through their favored habitat — bushveld, woodland, and montane grassland — looking for large insects, rats, lizards, snakes, frogs, rats, and even tortoises.
Their call, a deep, reverberating “oomph, oomph-oomph” usually made early in the mornings, is surprisingly similar to a lion’s roar.
