Climate change victim: Kalahari bird

The southern yellow-billed hornbill has not been able to breed properly and its numbers have declined subsequently.

• Climate change has been wreaking havoc on a number of species for quite some time now. Some have even gone extinct.
• It is now threatening a resident of the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa: The southern yellow-billed hornbill (Tockus leucomelas).
• A recent study has found that an increase in temperatures could see the hornbill disappear from parts of the Kalahari by 2027.

Key finding:

• In the Kalahari, air temperatures have already risen more than 2°C in a few decades. At this rate, by 2027, these birds will not breed at all at this site.
• Above a daily maximum temperature of 35.7 degrees Celsius (96.3 Fahrenheit), there were no successful breeding attempts among the hornbills.
• Comparing the first three seasons (2008-2011) of monitoring to the last three (2016-2019), the mean percentage of nest boxes occupied declined from 52% to 12%.
• Nest success, a breeding attempt successfully raising at least one chick fell from 58% to 17%.
• Fledglings produced per breeding attempt declined from 1.1 to 0.4.

About

• The bird is best known for its unusual breeding and nesting habits where the female seals herself in a cavity and stays there for about 50 days to brood and care for chicks. 
• They feed on insects, spiders, and scorpions as well as seeds that they find on the ground. 
• In appearance, the southern yellow-billed hornbill looks a lot like its sister species, the red-billed hornbill, Tockus erythrorhynchus.
  

Distribution:

• Continents: Africa
• Countries: South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• Regions: Eswatini
• Biogeographical realms: Afrotropical