Oxpecker Research Facility unveiled at Mokopane

Red-billed Oxpecker

The National Zoological Gardens of South Africa’s Mokopane Centre unveiled its custom-designed oxpecker facil­ity on Friday 18^th July 2008. This facil­ity is for the research of Red-billed Oxpeckers with the aim of breed­ing and relo­cat­ing these endangered birds to areas through­out South Africa.

In the 1900’s oxpecker num­bers were drastic­ally reduced as a res­ult of the use of dips to treat live­stock against tick infest­a­tions. As a res­ult, many oxpeck­ers, whose main source of food is ticks, were killed by the poison. Since that time, aware­ness has been cre­ated of more oxpecker-friendly cattle dips. This has helped to restore the sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship that pre­vi­ously exis­ted between the oxpeck­ers and the cattle that it rids of ticks. In the wild, oxpeck­ers rid many large ante­lope of ticks.

In January 2008, the National Zoo announced that it had suc­cess­fully bred a Red-billed Oxpecker at its Mokopane Centre in the Limpopo Province. What made this such an extraordin­ary hatch­ing is that oxpeck­ers are dif­fi­cult birds to main­tain in zoos due to their high activ­ity levels, unique diet­ary require­ments, and their com­plex rela­tion­ship with ungulates.

The only other record of suc­cess­ful breed­ing of cap­tive oxpeck­ers is from the Zurich Zoo, in Switzerland in 1973 where the first record of a Red-billed Oxpecker to leave a nest in a zoo envir­on­ment was noted. Oxpecker breed­ing was last attemp­ted at De Wildt, South Africa in the late 1980s.

Red-billed Oxpecker

The National Zoo embarked on the design and con­struc­tion of a facil­ity to house Red-billed Oxpeckers for research pur­poses. The birds bred will even­tu­ally be released back in to the wild to boost the oxpecker pop­u­la­tion. In 2007, in con­junc­tion with the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Operation Oxpecker, sev­eral birds were cap­tured in mist nets. Of the birds caught some remained at the Centre for a research pro­ject con­duc­ted by a doc­toral stu­dent. The study centres around the sym­bi­otic feed­ing beha­viour of Red-billed Oxpeckers as well as gain­ing sci­entific inform­a­tion on main­tain­ing and fur­ther breed­ing attempts.

The first part of the study included con­trolled feed­ing pref­er­ence exper­i­ments. A set of exper­i­ments meas­ured the Red-billed Oxpeckers’ response and pref­er­ence to a choice of four spe­cies of ticks and two altern­at­ive food sources, namely blood and meat.

The National Zoo’s Executive Director, Dr Clifford Nxomani says the first breed­ing of a Red-billed Oxpecker at the Mokopane Centre is a not­able accom­plish­ment for the National Zoo. “However, the real suc­cess story will come when the third gen­er­a­tion of Red-billed Oxpeckers breed and their off­spring can then be rein­tro­duced into the wild. We are very proud of this accom­plish­ment by our Research Department”. He fur­ther adds: “The tech­niques mastered by the National Zoo through the breed­ing of Red-billed Oxpeckers could be adap­ted in order to also suc­cess­fully breed with Yellow-billed Oxpeckers in the future”.

Oxpeckers breed as often as three times dur­ing the sum­mer months and lay only one egg. Two or three helper birds assist with the nest build­ing and feed­ing of the chick. The par­ent birds are respons­ible for the incub­a­tion of the chick.

According to the EWT’s Arnaud le Roux, gov­ern­ment depart­ments are also seek­ing assist­ance in com­pil­ing an oxpecker policy for the pro­tec­tion of these birds as more people wish to estab­lish these birds on their land, while pub­lic interest in oxpeck­ers and their role in the envir­on­ment are growing.

About the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa (NZG):
• Changes are afoot: The NZG is presently redevel­op­ing sev­eral aspects of the vis­itor exper­i­ence and will announce pro­gress and new ini­ti­at­ives from time to time. Visitors to the prop­erty may notice enclos­ures under con­struc­tion or redevel­op­ment.
• The 85-hectare Zoo in Pretoria houses 3117 spe­ci­mens of 209 mam­mal spe­cies, 1358 spe­ci­mens of 202 bird spe­cies, 3871 spe­ci­mens of 190 fish spe­cies, 388 spe­ci­mens of 4 inver­teb­rate spe­cies, 309 spe­ci­mens of 93 rep­tile spe­cies, and 44 spe­ci­mens of 7 amphi­bian spe­cies.
• More than 600 000 South Africans visit the NZG annu­ally.
• The NZG is ranked as one of the top 10 inter­na­tional zoolo­gical gar­dens.
• The NZG cel­eb­rates its 110^th birth­day next year.

Useful Links:
National Zoological Gardens of South Africa
South African Birds
National Research Foundation
The Red-billed Oxpecker on Wikipedia