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In this video you see Ground hornbill's doing some kind of ritual with prey in his beak.We saw them at the S21 between Lower Sabie and Skukuza.

I saw this Southern Ground Hornbill south of Skukuza. The whole story you can find in my Kruger story: "June 12th, Fourth day, Kills by the small ones . . . , Tuesday - Part 1 ".
Just follow the below link.




http://www.sanparks.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16403

Large size

one more from me (and please, no more bitching about what kind of camera I use or how blurry these pictures are - they are screen shots from my video footage and I had no time to set up my car tripod)







thanks

saw the 26.2.2008 between Tamboti and Orpen





the young don't know what doing with the egg
and the hen run in all senses with a lot of noise, poor hen

Saturday:

Both sets of 5 on the S-36, the first at Lugmag Dam (They have been there for months now!)



The second bunch near Muzandzene:



(Pics courtesy of Borderline.)

Saw a family in a tree on the Skukuza - LS road, 30 mins later they walked by with this one ready for dinner, think it was a mongoose, it was'nt dead, it proceeded to stab it several times before having it for dinner. [/img]

In 3 days, we saw 4 families all close to the road.

I did not realise they killed dwarf mongeese. Better not let my sister in law, Tawny, hear that. She will not like the ground hornbill very much anymore. The mongoose is one of her favourites.

A few years back just south of Mopani very early morning I came across two ground-horbills killing a lilac-breasted roller. How they caught it remains a mystery. This last trip I saw one cracking a giant land snail.

Photos in the 1st instance was so bad in the early morning light that I decided to replace a 100-400mm Canon in favor of a f2.8 70-200mm, but have proof none the less.

Here is one just sitting with a sun spider. Snack for later as it was during the heat of the day in summer, south of Oliants at Ngotso dam.


Large view

We have also seen various families of hornbills at different sights lately.
I do not have a photo of any SGH eating anything BUT I do have a
dent in my car!!
The hornbill saw his own reflection in my brand new black shiny Polo and descided he didnt like the bird staring back at him and had a go at him! The faster I reversed, the faster he came at his reflection.

Spotted on the road to Pretorius kop on 25 Sep 08!

Hi all
Tell me how can you tell which one is mail and which is female.
There great I see two sighting when I was in Kruger September 2008

As you can see, the female has a dark purple/blue patch within the red throat patch....Another thing I've noticed is that Ground Hornbill have these pale cream eyes, something my Sasal Guide shows as dark eyes.

Shingwedzi is an exellent basecamp to look out for hornbills! I have seen plenty there, in fact so many that after a while we decided to not take pictures anymore

Have seen them 3 together quite often, don't know why the number 3 actually featured. Saw them flying (nice white on the wing points) and heared them actually brumming, when they sat on a dead tree, just outside Shingwedzi! Now I understand the afrikaans name 'Brom voel'...

Will post pics later