A festivity of pups

One.... two, three....
Crouched in the dappled shade of a marula tree, I was counting pups.
Not pups of the canine persuasion; mongoose pups.
Now this was no easy feat because they were passing me at speed, curled into walnut-sized balls within the mouths of their caregivers.

Four... five...
Number five was having a rough ride, dragged along enthusiastically by nine-month-old Echo. Despite pointing his nose skyward and waddling on tiptoes, he simply wasn’t tall enough to lift his cargo clear of snags.
Six...
Oh, wait a minute, there’s one being carried back again...
Back to five...

Koppiekats group was shifting its week-old pups to a new termite mound and it was my one chance to figure out how many there were.
Frenzied excitement gripped the group as mongooses dashed back and forth; some carrying pups, some not. Calling anxiously to one another, and with agitation-fluffed fur, some individuals raced ahead to check the safety of the new mound while others ran helter-skelter back to huddle the last nest-bound pups. Meanwhile the pup-carriers hurried on past, self-importantly announcing their passage with uninterrupted, high-pitched peeps (‘clear the way, pup coming through’). And the little ones - although tiny, black-fuzzed and blind - gave ear-piercing squawks whenever they were unceremoniously dumped beneath tussock or log.

Six... seven...
Eight!

No wonder the group was so excited.
Four is the normal size of a dwarf mongoose litter.
So how did Koppiekats end up with eight?



Koppiekats’ most recent progeny, venturing out at four weeks old. Pups stay snugged away inside a termite mound for their first three weeks of life, coddled and guarded by babysitters. With so many little ones, Koppiekats felt the responsibility keenly, usually leaving behind two or three minders.

As you probably know, dwarf mongooses - like their celebrated cousins the meerkats – are the living embodiment of the Musketeers’ motto. Dedicated to the ‘all-for-one and one-for-all’ maxim, group members team up to harry snakes, evict trespassers and warn one another of incoming raptors. With heroic selflessness, they forfeit their own romantic aspirations to devotedly care for the offspring of their group’s sovereigns. It’s all heart-warmingly altruistic.
In theory.
In reality, the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting are not quite so chaste. These heirs apparent (sisters and grown daughters of the Queen) are not above indulging in a little hanky-panky. And when the inevitable happens, they try to hush it up by smuggling the consequences into the royal nursery.

To help perpetuate the hoax, they give birth on the same day as the monarch. I don’t know how they manage this because the courtiers normally mate a day or two after the Queen. But when royalty decrees, loyal subjects follow, ready or not. It looks as if the illegitimate pups are simply borne a little premature (they’re smaller and have shorter fur). Even courtiers who are only ‘a bit pregnant’ honour the auspicious day, aborting their litters and discreetly nibbling up the tiny pink foetuses.



When spring is in the air, the ladies of the court don’t seem to be able to say ‘No’, and the sovereign is rarely alone when she delivers the first litter of the summer. This is Cricket, an errant Princess in Bugbears, awaiting the big day.

So what’s the fate of these illegitimate ankle-biters?
Well that’s in the paws of the Queen.
Normally they’re doomed.
Her Majesty swiftly transforms them into a restorative post-partum snack and the bereaved mums then act as wet-nurses for the rightful heirs. Fortunately (from my perspective) dwarf mongooses don’t believe in airing their dirty laundry in public so all I see of the nefarious deed is a bulging tummy and blood-smeared chin. Not so meerkats, who enact a horrifying spectacle in which the whole group tussles over the gory remains.

However, occasionally, if food is plentiful, the Queen grants a stay of execution. A genetic study of Serengeti’s dwarf mongooses found that 18% of pups reared by the group are the progeny of lesser females. Although the rulers of my other study groups were merciless this year, Pleiades, the sovereign of Koppiekats, opted for clemency. So some of the pups that just passed me are actually Pleiades’ nieces, nephews or grandkids.

The brood at six weeks. Notice the size difference between the legitimate pups (on the left) and the little interloper on the right. Yes, there is a question mark over his head: I don’t know who his mum is (because three courtiers - Spark, Helium and Mercury – were in the family way).

But even if they escape the death sentence at birth, illegitimate pups aren’t out of the woods. They face a second test. And it is this that has made me apprehensive every time I've visited Koppiekats.

You see at one month old, mongoose pups begin tagging along on the group’s daily foraging jaunts. Chivvied, cajoled and carried, the little ones are tended constantly. Carefully lodged under a log or boulder, the pups are then presented with half-chewed creepy-crawlies by doting group members.
But when the pups hit five weeks old, this mollycoddling stops. Although everyone still feeds them (and will do so for another five weeks), the youngsters are expected to look out for themselves. If the group runs, so must they. It doesn’t matter how far, or how fast; they must keep up. So if any pup is below par (debilitated from want of food, illness or underdevelopment), they’re simply left behind.

Although I loathe this phase of mongoose-rearing, it serves the mongooses well, ensuring that they channel their efforts only into the healthiest pups.
And I’m very relieved to report that all but one of the little Koppiekats pups managed to pass this trial. Aided and abetted by a timely glut of beetle lava, seven of the roly-poly little creatures live to tell the tale. In fact they’re doing so well, they spend most of their time playing rather than trying to cadge food from their betters.

Shell games.

Leaf games.

Bite-brother games.

If you were wondering, no-one left these pups out in the rain. The rusty patches on their fur are from daubs of ‘Camomile’ blonde hair dye (so I can tell who’s who).

Born on 31 Oct, the Koppiekat pups remain unnamed. I’m trying to come up with Halloween-appropriate monikers, but they also need to be associated with minerals (as in Twenty Questions). Darkness, maybe? Sulphur? Or Silver (for the bullets needed to pot vampires)? Any suggestions gratefully received!

I almost forgot.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!

Male nannies get the girls

One of the advantages of living above the river is the endless aeronautics display.

Step outside my door and you're treated to fork-tailed drongos fluttering and plunging, little bee-eaters, adorned in cinnamon and gold, effortlessly looping the looping and, way up above, tiny swifts floating like calligraphy bewitched from the page.

But among these master aviators, there’s one creature that surpasses them all.

Dressed like an accountant and encumbered by a massive ice-pick bill, it seems an unlikely candidate for aerial supremacy, but the pied kingfisher is utterly mesmerising.

Zooming along just inches above the water, it suddenly rockets upward 10m (33ft) into the air, and there it stalls. Completely. With its torso held almost vertically and its huge black bill pointing straight down, it hovers motionless; not just for a few moments, but on and on and on.

Pied kingfishers (Ceryle rudis) are the second largest of South Africa’s ten kingfisher species. This one’s double necklace of black reveals that it’s male; females are more demur, sporting only a single band. Photo posted on Flickr by Tarique Sani.

It’s at this point that I start feeling anxious. I know I should be excited at the prospect of the hunt, and I’ve seen other people clutch one another eagerly and cry, “Oh look, it’s about to dive!”
But as the bird just hangs there, flouting gravity, I find myself glancing at the pool below and wondering how anything can plunge at breakneck speed into one foot of water without suffering... er, neck-breaking consequences. As the bird continues to hover (for the next 5 to 10 seconds), pictures drift into my mind: murky underwater images of kingfishers stuck bill-first in the muddy pond floor.

Of course this never happens. Down the bird plummets, plunging below the surface and immediately surging back up - almost at the same speed (how does it do this?) - amid a glittering cowl of water droplets.



Pied kingfishers plunge-dive in waters throughout Africa, India, Myanmar and southern China. While African birds dine exclusively on fish, those living in Asia are less fussy, enjoying side dishes of aquatic insects and crabs.
Photo by Arno Meintjes.


But if the way pied kingfishers acquire lunch is bizarre, it’s nothing to the way they produce more little kingfishers.

Defying all kingfisherly conventions, this bird thumbs its nose wings its beak at the concept of territoriality.
And nuclear families? Well, who needs ‘em?

You see unlike other kingfishers, pieds gather together in busy breeding colonies. Using nothing but beak and claw, they gouge out 2 m (6.6 ft) long nesting tunnels in a communal bank, sometimes crowding their homes to within 0.5 m (1.6 ft) of one another.
And as if this isn’t social enough, loving couples also share their underground hideaways with up to six male nannies!

Born to burrow. The pied kingfisher's second and third toes are partly fused together; this is thought to help them shovel dirt.
Photo posted on Flickr by skuarua.

So how does all this come about?
Well, young pied kingfishers leave the family home normally at about four months of age, but if the guys don’t find themselves a girl (and 95% bomb out), they move back home with Mum and Dad. Now this isn’t as bad as it sounds because they do help out about the house. In fact, they put as much effort into their chores (guarding the chicks from marauding mongooses, monitors and rivals, and ferrying fish to them) as do Mum and Dad. Of course this is sensible (and so isn't the kind of behaviour you expect from young males): if you can’t have kids of your own, at least you can give your genes a push-start by helping your little brothers and sisters.

However, in some pied kingfisher colonies, pairs also take on unrelated childcare workers.

But why do these males want to hand over good fish to strangers?
And if there’s free help available, why don’t all colonies take advantage of it?
To get to the bottom of this fishy behaviour (sorry), Uli Reyer undertook a long-term study in Kenya, comparing kingfishers that lived on the windy shores of Lake Victoria (where non-related home-help is all the go) with those dwelling at flamingo-rimmed Lake Naivasha (where it’s unheard of).

He found that if you’re a pied kingfisher, Lake Naivasha is the place to be. Here the birds live a cushy life, feasting on plump native cichlids. Even without any help, pairs are able to successfully rear four healthy chicks.
But things are very different at Lake Victoria. The kingfishers here dine on slim, deep-water sardines which only come up to the surface at dawn and dusk. The birds must fly long distances over open water to reach their feeding ground water and the wind-whipped ripples reduce visibility. Only 24% of the birds’ dives snare a fish (compared with 79% at Naivasha), and pairs working alone can raise only 1.9 chicks. Half their hatchlings simply starve to death. So Lake Victoria kingfishers needed all the help they can get.

A juvenile pied kingfisher (and groups normally rear four) gulps down 35 g (1.2 oz) of fish daily and is fed for at least six weeks. But the fish the kingfishers catch average only 1-2 g (0.04-0.07 oz). Even without a calculator, that’s an awful lot of work!
Photo posted on Flickr by Lip Kee.

Just to make certain that it was the need to put food on the table that led to the recruitment of helpers, the researchers sneakily increased the workload of Lake Navaisha pairs by doubling their clutch to 8 to 10 chicks. Sure enough, these beleaguered parents happily accepted non-related nannies into their homes, even though this was not the done thing in their neighbourhood. In contrast, when families at Lake Victoria were reduced to just one or two chicks, the unburdened parents steadfastly rejected the approaches of potential helpers.

But all this doesn’t explain why unrelated males want to help.
If they don’t have younger siblings to care for, why don’t they just loaf about, marshalling their resources so they’re super sleek and sexy for the next breeding season?

Well Reyer discovered that 91% of these unrelated, live-in childcare workers landed themselves a girl the following year (compared with only 60% of the stay-at-home sons and 33% of the loafers).
What was their secret?
Well, almost half of these successful Lotharios teamed up with the female they’d helped the previous year!
You see fathering baby kingfishers really takes it out of you, and only about half of dads survive to breed the following year. And when hubby passes on, who’s right there, offering a consoling fish to the grieving widow? The live-in help, of course.

Unlike sons stuck at home (whose testes don’t even bother to produce sperm), unrelated helpers are all primed up for sex. This explains why Dad only accepts them into his family after his chicks hatch out and there's no chance of a bit of hanky-panky with Mum.
Photo by Andy Li. 

In fact, it looks as if the pied kingfishers’ unique nesting colonies actually serve as old time hiring fairs. Here, amid all the hustle and bustle, youths seeking childcare work can check out prospective families and advertise their availability (by presenting Dad with a gift of fish), and overworked parents can pick and choose whom they’d like to have help with the kids.

Looking smug? Traditionally kingfishers are associated with good luck. Photo by Martin Heigan.

A blessing of bee-eaters

When I first learned what bee-eaters ate I was shocked.

I mean common names are almost always wrong, right?

You don't see honeyeaters plundering bee hives or oystercatchers diving for pearls. An antbird wouldn't be seen dead consuming ants, miners don't venture underground and blacksmith plovers show no interest in metalwork. And as for goatsuckers (nightjars), well...

Anyway, who in their right mind would want to eat bees?

Well, swooping and gliding in the airspace outside my house is a flock of around 10 birds that do precisely that.

They're white-fronted bee-eaters and they just love noshing on stinging things.



White-fronted bee-eaters (Merops bullockoides) always remind me of an Australian aboriginal creation myth that says birds arose when a rainbow shattered and the falling fragments took flight.
Now that's nicer than descending from dinosaurs, isn't it.
Photo by Nathan Rupert.

Looping the loop on slick wings, bee-eaters will snap up other flying critters too (no airborne grasshopper, wasp, cicada or termite is safe) but they actually prefer to feast on bees. Calling to each other with noisy enthusiasm and settling in gregarious clusters on the overhead power lines, they sit scanning the sky for quarry, whimsically tilting their heads to one side and then the other and staring intently straight up into the blue. In Malaysia, olive bee-eaters can spot a 1 cm (0.4") wasp from 80-95 m (260-310 ft) away, and I'm sure my locals are just as astute. Once they detect a victim they dash out in aerial pursuit. Their long curved bill – so like a nectar feeder's – allows them to keep their eye on the ball bee right up to the moment of capture (which is marked with an audible snap). They then zoom back to their perch for a bit of bug-processing.

I love the way my resident clan constantly narrates their activities. They have appealing upward-inflected calls; a tasteful combination of squeaking-door and balloon-rub (I know that doesn't sound pleasant but it is).



Assault and battery. Bee-eaters use violence to de-venom their prey. First they beat the hapless victim senseless and then carefully rub its nether parts against the perch (as you'd move an eraser) to tear away the noxious bits. Photo by Arno & Louise Meintjes.

When I first moved here I was startled to come across what looked like a pile of used Christmas wrappings strewn on the sandy track by the river. As I got closer I realised it was actually a gathering of white-fronted bee-eaters. But 'Oh my God', they'd been massacred!

They were lying perfectly still in a tumbled heap, their wings outspread and their heads, with eyes closed, kinked at horrible neck-broken angles. I stared aghast. Who was responsible for this dreadful carnage? Only when I came within a couple of metres (6 ft) did an eye open, and then another. I could almost hear the exasperated sighs as the sleeping birds slowly struggled to their feet, ruffled their feathers back into place and glared up at me. Oh, they'd been sunning.

But bee-eater weirdness isn't limited to a taste for venom-toting bugs and melodramatic basking behaviour. They burrow too. Yep, they use that constantly-growing beak to gouge out a one metre (3 ft) long tunnel from a cliff face. Their short-legs and tiny feet are specially designed (I'm sounding very creationist today) for earthmoving, with two toes fused partway along their length for improved shovelling power.

Nesting in large colonies, white-fronted bee-eaters can pepper a cliff face with ten burrows per square metre. Their tunnels slope upward - presumably to avoid runoff - but the egg chamber is rimmed with a lip to prevent accidents. Photo by Sander Kuulkers.

My local bee-eaters used to nest in the river bank near my house but they've abandoned the site. You can see why here. The little holes are the original nest tunnels and the big ones are nests excavated by predators. Prime suspects (based on claw-mark size): Nile monitors and honey badgers.

I you haven't already guessed, White-fronted bee-eaters are special. They possess one of the most complex social systems in the avian world. They're like those large, jolly southern European families that feature in Hollywood movies. Pairs team up for life, but they're often helped in their chick-rearing duties by one or two other birds (usually kids who've chosen to loiter at home). While this sort of cooperative breeding is fairly common in birds, white-fronted bee-eaters go even further. Each family unit joins forces with two or three other units to create a big sociable clan (of up to 12 adults). Clan members happily visit one another's nests and forage together, and if one family loses its brood, it will switch to helping raise its neighbour's. But just like feuding Capulets and Montagues, bee-eater clans are intolerant of one another.

Although breeding colonies normally house three to six clans, each one chases rival clan members away from its nests and fiercely defends its own exclusive feeding territory. Since the clan's feeding territory is normally located around 1 km (0.4 miles) from the nesting site, the birds must wing it all the way back each time they want to feed the kids. And this is no mean feat, considering that a bee-eater nestling munches around 50 insects a day (all individually delivered). Phew!

There are currently two other species of bee-eater helping to keep my garden bee-free. The European bee-eaters are migrants, winging in at the start of December for four months of bee-filled R & R. This species is a bit schizophrenic in South Africa. While the ones around here are holidaying after the stress of chick-rearing in southern Europe or the Middle East, those further south are busy stuffing bees into fledglings in preparation for their winter vacation to central Africa.
My third species, the little bee-eater, resides here fulltime. Each year a vociferous pair raises its family in the roof of an old aardvark hole inside one of the mongooses' favourite termite mounds. We've all got used to the scolding.

Bringing home the bacon bee. When breeding a European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) needs to catch around 225 bee-sized insects daily to maintain itself and its chicks. Photo by Joaquim Coelho.

Of the 24 bee-eater species that grace our world, the little bee-eater (Merops pusillus) is the teeniest. It's about the size of a sparrow. Photo posted on Flickr by Lip Kee.