Exploring Honeyguide– Human Mutualism
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FITZPATRICK REPORT one good turn Exploring honeyguide– human mutualism TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS CLAIRE SPOTTISWOODE > 22 AFRICAN BIRDLIFE HONEYGUIDES 23 REPORT YOUR SIGHTINGS Have you seen a Greater Honeyguide? Did it guide you? Your sightings are valuable for our research, so please submit all your Greater Honey- guide sightings to www. honeyguiding.com. There you will also find more information about this citizen science project, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Animal Demography Unit at UCT. you’re able to digest it; most verte- chattering call, then fly from tree brates can’t, but honeyguides can. to tree in the direction of the bees’ We don’t yet know for certain how nest, indicating its location to a hu- honeyguides are able to do this, but man follower. The honey-hunters above Honey-hunters BENEATH THEIR modest appear- Unfortunately for the hosts, than seven hours to die. Mission what we do know is that they use track the bird’s call through the searching for honey- ance, honeyguides are intriguingly natural selection has equipped the accomplished, the honeyguide humans to get it. trees, typically for several hundred guides in Niassa bizarre birds, and none more so honeyguide chick with the means chick now has a monopoly on all Honeyguides are brilliant finders metres. When the bird stops and National Reserve, than the Greater Honeyguide. Its to remove any competition for its the food brought to the nest. The of wild bees’ nests, both honeybees its chatter dwindles, the honey- Mozambique. scientific name, Indicator indicator, parents’ care. It hatches already host parents will blithely proceed and the tiny stingless bees that will hunters know that they are close. tells you much of what you need to armed with a pair of needle-sharp, to feed the impostor in the dark- have infuriated you by sipping at They scan the branches above, oc- previous spread know about it. translucent hooks at the tip of its ness, even while it savages their the corners of your eyes on a sweaty casionally hitting tree trunks with Yao honey-hunter Much, but not all. Like all 17 beak. Blind, naked and weighing own offspring. A month later, the savanna day. Again we don’t know their axes to provoke the bees into Orlando Yassene honeyguide species, the Greater only three or four grams, it lashes honeyguide fledges from the nest, how the honeyguides do it, but emerging and revealing their loca- holds a male Greater Honeyguide begins life in a bru- out in the dark as soon as it sens- its bill hooks long since vanished their disproportionately enlarged tion. The nest found, the humans Honeyguide tempo- tal and bloody fashion in the nest es movement alongside. It bites and its handsome yellow and green olfactory bulbs suggest that smell provide their part of the deal, and rarily captured for of another bird. In the case of the down on whichever body part it plumage showing no trace of its may well be involved, probably precisely how this unfolds seems to research in Niassa. Greater Honeyguide, the victim hits first, grasping tight and shak- bloody start to life. aided by vision and hearing. But vary subtly among cultural tradi- is typically a bee-eater, kingfisher, ing its victim like a terrier shakes there’s a snag. Honeybee nests are tions in different parts of Africa. hoopoe or wood-hoopoe, nesting a rat. After each frenzied bout, it nd then Mr Hyde switches usually hidden in tree cavities high deep within an underground bur- pauses to recover from the exer- to Dr Jekyll. The Greater in the canopy and are defended or the past three years, to- Brow or a tree cavity. tion before stirring into life again Honeyguide is a master of by swarms of bees that can – and gether with a honey-hunting The honeyguide chick hatches some time later. Acooperation as well as exploitation do – kill honeyguides by stinging community of the Yao ethnic honey-hunters and loyal collabora- Orlando Yassene surrounded by the decomposing My colleagues and I have been and deceit. As most birdwatch- them. In short, honeyguides know Fgroup in northern Mozambique, I tors with the Greater Honeyguide, chops open a wild remains of one or more of its host’s studying honeyguides in southern ing or rural-living African people where the bees are, but can’t get at have been studying honeyguide‒ which they call the sego. When a bees’ nest in a felled eggs that have been punctured Zambia since 2008 and have filmed know, the Greater Honeyguide the wax. Humans know how to get human cooperation. This com- sego shows them a bees’ nest, the tree in the Niassa by its mother, killing the embryo this behaviour in many hosts’ (and, as far as we know, no other at the wax, but we’re not nearly as munity lives in the beautiful Niassa men gather dry wood, surround National Reserve within. Some eggs are laid after the nests. Our infra-red cameras, bur- species) has a sweeter side. An- good at finding bees. So Greater National Reserve, a wilderness the it with big bunches of green leaves (top), then harvests honeyguide female lays her own, ied underground alongside the other of the honeyguide family’s Honeyguides enlist our help and, it size of Denmark where people and and shape it into a duffle-bag-like the honeycomb however, and others manage to nest chamber, have revealed that peculiarities is that its members all turns out, we enlist theirs. wildlife coexist and, in the case of bundle securely bound with strips (above). hatch despite the damage to their host young can take anything from specialise in eating wax. Wax is a Greater Honeyguides approach the Greater Honeyguide, coop- of bark or palm frond. They then protective shell. a merciful nine minutes to more lipid and therefore rich in energy if and beckon people with a special erate. Here, Yao men are superb find a slender sapling with a> 24 AFRICAN BIRDLIFE MARCH/APRIL 2017 HONEYGUIDES 25 bees’ nest to expose the honey for themselves, filling buckets with oozing comb while gorging on the best bits as they recover from their exertions. In so doing, they expose food for the bird. Plenty of wax is left behind, either as dry combs containing no honey or as chewed lumps spat out by the honey-hunters. Many Yao honey- hunters even make a special ef- fort to gather up the wax and present it to the honeyguide on a little bed of fresh green leaves; they make a point of respect- ing the sego. When the men de- left A honey-hunter part, the honey guide quietly flies eating part of the down to feed. Our camera traps harvest from a wild have shown that several Greater bees’ nest. Honey guides usually join in and benefit from the men’s efforts, as below Yao honey- do other honey guide species such hunter Musaji Mua- as the Lesser and Scaly-throated. medi places wax on a Thus the bird exchanges its bed of green leaves to knowledge for the humans’ skills, reward the honey- to mutual advantage. This remark- guide that led him to able cooperation was first scientifi- a bees’ nest. cally documented by Dr Hussein Isack, working in Kenya in the learnt it from their fathers and that might affect a honeyguide’s 1980s. I remember as a child being that it is the best way to attract a chances of cooperating. transfixed at Dr Isack’s account of honey guide and to keep its atten- This is just what Mbamba vil- it during a Cape Bird Club lecture tion; it tells the bird that you are its lage’s honey-hunting community when he visited South Africa in the friend. The men make this sound and I did, with the support of early 1990s. only when interacting with honey- Colleen and Keith Begg and their Where I now work in northern guides, so from a honeyguide’s team at the Mariri Environmental Mozambique, Yao honey-hunters perspective, the call reliably signals Centre at Niassa. First, Mbamba’s rely on cooperating with honey- that the person making it is serious honey-hunters allowed me to re- guides to find a large proportion about honey-hunting and that a re- cord their individual calls: 24 ver- of the honey that they eat and sell. ward is likely to result if the honey- sions of ‘brrrr-hm’, each with its In so doing, they also provide a de- guide offers its cooperation. own personal style. I also asked pendable supply of wax to Niassa’s How do we know whether the honey-hunters to make oth- honeyguide population. So both honey guides really ‘understand’ er, arbitrary sounds (either their livelihoods appear to be greatly en- what humans are signalling to own names or the Yao words for hanced by this collaboration. But a them? If honeyguides know that ‘honey guide’ and ‘honey’). fascinating phenomenon takes this humans giving the ‘brrrr-hm’ call I then edited each set of record- association a step further: Niassa’s are likely to be good collabora- ings so that they would play back honey-hunters signal to honey- tors, then we should expect the every seven seconds at a constant guides, and the honeyguides seem birds to be more likely to beckon volume through a speaker. Final- Orlando Yassene hoists natural fork at just the right height, the swarm thus subdued, the men to understand them. a human making this particular ly, two honey-hunters (Orlando a bundle of burning chop it down, jam the bundle into can continue their work, only oc- sound rather than other sounds, Yassene, Musaji Muamedi or Car- for 15 minutes, not talking to one dry sticks and green the fork, set it alight and hoist this casionally having to swat a particu- n the Niassa region, the Yao and to be more likely to keep los Augusto) and I carried out another.