It was in the evening when the sun was setting. We were returning back to the base camp of Venetia Nature Reserve near Mapongubwe National Park behind an open air safari buckie. The sky had considerably darken for the past half an hour. I was looking at the outline of the trees against the sunset when I saw an outline of a chicken looking like bird flying out of the top of a tree at almost a vertical angle.
It flapped it wings rapidly and struggled to fly its fat body about three metres above the top of the tree. At the peak of its height, it stopped for a split second, did a 360 degrees turn, tucked its wings tightly against its body and took a dive back down.
I blinked my eyes and stared hard. I thought I was imagining things. I quickly closed my mouth and looked around to see if anyone else saw what I had seen. Was it a guinea fowl? But I have never seen a guinea fowl doing anything remotely close to such a display. But I was so sure it looked close to a chicken looking like bird. But it also looked so unreal, almost like some scene from the animation Chicken Run.
“It's a suicide bird doing a display,” Laura, GVI volunteer from Tstsikama explained.
Cool.
Apparently, suicide birds, known as the red-crested korhann, do this as part of their courtship displays. More information can be found can be found here
What a cool bird!
No comments:
Post a Comment