Bird-badger cooperation | Eating up parrots | Pictures of Chad | Impressive Tanzanian trees
Do birds and badgers conspire to find ‘the sweet spot'?
Greater honeyguide birds famously show human honey hunters the way to wild bees’ nests for a reward of beeswax and larvae. But do they also solicit help from non-human partners -- like honey badgers?
A study just published in the Journal of Zoology suggests they do, at least in some places.
A team of researchers interviewed nearly 400 human honey hunters from nine African countries to find out if they had witnessed honeyguides leading honey badgers to honey. Most had not, but the team found that many in Tanzania had.
Among the most credible accounts were those given by members of the Hadzabe ethnic group, who live near Lake Eyasi, in the north of the country.
The Hadzabe are skilled at stalking wildlife and are therefore best able to witness bird-badger interactions without disturbing them. The authors say their study “highlights the need for scientists to engage more with relevant communities and learn from their views.”
The badger-bird mutualism is likely highly geographically restricted due to the increase in habitat degradation across the animals' range, and the risk of persecution that badgers face from humans in the daytime.
It could be that only some Tanzanian populations of honey badgers have developed the skills and knowledge to cooperate with honeyguides, and have transmitted that knowledge “culturally”, just like humans have.
If so, the relationship between badgers and honeyguides risks dying out completely unless the places and the conditions for it to persist are protected, the scientists warn.
A honey badger feeds on honeycomb in Mozambique | Colleen Begg
Parrots and pigeons threatened by hunters in Madagascar
Parrots and pigeons in Madagascar are under severe threat from hunters, adding to threats they and the rest of the Indian Ocean’s birdlife face from deforestation and introduced predators like cats.
While most bird hunting appears to be done sustainably, and is an important source of human nutrition, three key species are being over-hunted, a new study finds.
These are the black parrot, the Madagascar green pigeon and the grey-headed lovebird.
The parrots and the pigeons are “preferred for their flavour” and up to 82% of their local populations are eaten per year.
The decline in numbers of black parrots and green pigeons observed during the study may warrant both species being listed as near-threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the authors state.
Bird-hunting occurs throughout Madagascar, meaning that what was documented in the study site on the Masoala Peninsula, in the north-east of the island, is probably taking place at a wider scale.
There are important conservation implications. The green pigeon, if hunted sustainably, could play a key role in helping to restore forests fragmented by land clearances.
That’s because the pigeons disperse the seeds of pioneer plant species that aren’t dispersed by Madagascar’s native lemurs, says the study published in Conservation Letters.
A black parrot foraging in Ankarafantsika, Madagascar | Francesco Veronesi | Wikimedia
Conservation group raises funds by selling unique photos of Chad
Conservation group, Wings for Conservation, is holding a charity sale of some of its limited prints of Chadian landscapes and wildlife to raise funds to buy a new engine for its surveillance aircraft.
The group works alongside other conservationists in the Central African country. It recently helped Wild Africa Conservation and Giraffe Conservation Foundation to discover a new population of endangered Kordofan giraffes in the centre of the country, for instance.
On the back of that discovery, that part of Chad may soon be turned into a new wildlife reserve.
Jaime Dias, the founder of Wings for Conservation, says money raised from the sale of 10 limited-edition prints will contribute to his organisation’s work. Dias has a unique birds-eye-view of Chad and its stunning landscapes and wildlife; the prints on sale are all photographs he took from the plane.
They include the picture below, entitled “Family”, which was taken in Chad’s Binder-Léré Reserve, in the country’s south-west. That area is home to Kordofan giraffes, African manatees and hippos, as well as Chad’s third-largest population of elephants.
Wings for Conservation has been helping the Chadian government fly conservation missions in the reserve since 2018, when a large number of elephants were killed by poachers who entered the country on horseback from neighbouring Sudan.
“Our work and presence in the area led to the creation of Zah-Soo National Park, which was established in March 2022,” a statement from Wings for Conservation says.
To learn more about the “Eyes in the Sky Print Fundraiser”, visit the group’s website.
A family of hippos in Chad’s Binder-Léré Reserve | Jaime Dias
Nature Notes: Mighty trees left standing
I’ve just returned from a trip to Tanzania, where I visited a conservation project in the east of the country.
During one afternoon’s outing, my hosts took me wading through a river flowing alongside the eastern flanks of the Nguru Mountains.
Nguru is one of the massifs that makes up a chain of isolated mountain blocks known as the Eastern Arc Mountains.
These mountains and their unique plants and animals are under threat from human encroachment, including land clearance for agriculture.
While we stood ankle-deep in the swirling water, I noticed a hillside to our right that had been cleared of most of its forest. Some huge trees with strikingly-pale bark had been left standing.
One of my companions, a tropical botanist, identified them as Sterculia appendiculata.
They’re known in English as tall sterculias, and in Swahili as mfune. The wood is soft and of no value, not even as firewood, the botanist told me. Ironically, this has been their saving grace.
As we drove through the surrounding district, the mfune trees never failed to impress me as they stood isolated in patches of maize or cassava.
They were a reminder of what equally-mighty trees had once stood beside them.