The Woodpeckers

Ndebele name: Isinqolamthi, Shona name: Hohodza

THE name is derived from the habit of climbing on trees and drilling into the bark for insect prey, a feeding method which attains its greatest development in this family. Out of nine species of southern African woodpeckers, four are found throughout Zimbabwe. These are the Bennett’s Woodpecker, Goldentailed Woodpecker, Cardinal Woodpecker and the Bearded Woodpecker. The Little Spotted Woodpecker is confined to eastern Zimbabwe, the Olive Woodpecker is scarcely found in Victoria Falls and the others are not found in Zimbabwe.

Roberta Katunga

Business Reporter

The tourism market in Zimbabwe has experienced a significant upsurge in arrivals especially to the resort town of Victoria Falls as the economic situation continues to improve and stabilise, an official said.

Scavenging by avian, mammalian species

SCAVENGING by large-bodied vertebrates is observed in many ecosystems but has rarely been quantified. The opportunity to scavenge is determined by the availability of carcasses, which depends on the number of animals dying from causes other than predation and the number of prey killed by predators in the area.

International tourist arrivals worldwide grew by 5 percent in the first four months of 2012, despite remaining economic uncertainties in some of the major outbound markets.

Roberta Katunga

Business Reporter

GWAYI Intensive Conservation Area (ICA) hunting safari farmers are recording an increase in international tourist arrivals due to the high quality of trophies that the safari has, an official said.

Entomophagy

IMAGINE walking into a restaurant and the menu reads, “cricket stir fry or salted cockroaches?” My guess is you feel disgusted.

Coprophagia or coprophagy animals

THIS is just one word that was interesting to know and I tried looking it up but there was still relatively little information on it, in books and even on line but I still thought it was still interesting. Coprophagia or coprophagy is the consumption of faeces, from the Greek copros (“feces”) and phagein (“to eat”). Coprophagy refers to many kinds of faeces eating including heterospecifics, allocoprophagy, autocoprophagy

Walter Mswazie

Masvingo Correspondent

PLAYERS in the tourism industry have called upon the Government to resuscitate conservancies that lie idle in Masvingo province amid fears that a number of animal species may be forced into extinction.

OK Africa is well respected for its diversity of animals and its landscape that is almost pristine and most of all the joy that it brings to anyone who looks at it. But of late we seem to be jeopardising the only inheritance that we have, being mostly influenced by our greed and misguided facts about the use of our animals.

THE high air passenger duty charged by the British government is behind this week’s announcement by South Africa Airways (SAA) that it is withdrawing its direct flights between Cape Town and London/ Heathrow on 15 August.

The airline says the duty has caused demand to fall and made the route unprofitable.

The oxpeckers’ special adaptations

Ndebele : Ihlalankomo, Shona : Tsande.

THE oxpeckers are two species of birds which make up the family Buphagidae.

These two species get their English names from the colour distinction of their bill and their habit of perching on large mammals (both wild and domesticated) such as cattle or rhinocerous pecking on ticks and other ectoparasites, thus the yellow-billed oxpecker — Buphagus africanus and the red-billed oxpecker — Buphagus erythrorhynchus. They are “tickbirds” endemic to the savanna of sub-Saharan Africa