Palm Nut Vulture Traditional Cache
Hidden : 7/19/2008
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

The cache is located close to some Raffia Palms where Palm Nut Vultures have nested.

The cache can not be reached from the N2. Do not go on to the N2 & pay the toll fee - it could become a very expensive cache if you do this.

Palmnut Vultures invariably nest in the crown of a Raffia (or Kosi) Palm, Raphia australis, which was first introduced into the Mtunzini area from Mozambique at the start of the twentieth century, and in the 1960s further distributed in the area by conservationist Ian Garland. The Raffia Palm is a very tall tree with leaf fronds of up to 18 metres long – the longest leaves of any tree in the world. When this palm was established at Mtunzini, the Palmnut Vulture, a tropical bird from Angola and Mozambique, soon followed.

The Raffia Palm bears only one crop of fruit in its lifetime of about 20 years, but then it bears all its nuts in one great cluster of up to 6000 nuts with a mass of 1000 kilograms. When the fruit is mature the tree dies, but the single crop gives the birds a plentiful supply of very rich and nutritious fruit. The nuts are about the size of a big hen’s egg, covered with large scales. The birds expertly pull out a fruit, strip off the scales with their specially adapted beaks, and then scrape off the two-millimetre layer of yellow flesh with a sideways movement. After all that effort the bird only gets about one tablespoonful of food, but luckily there is a lot of it.

The Palmnut Vulture makes a huge stick nest lined with coarse grass and after all the trouble of building it, lays only one egg. Incubation is done by both adults, on a more or less equal basis. After an incubating period of 50 days, a dark brown chick emerges. The adults are good providers. About 20 percent of the food they bring in is palm nuts; the rest is crabs, frogs, the large local snails, birds, carrion, large insects, rodents and fish. The chick fledges after about 60 days and then, after the second day, it goes onto the next palm where the fruits are ready and manages to strip the scales off nuts, then scrapes off the flesh itself. It seems this is the only bird of prey that can fend for itself so soon after fledging. However, in spite of this, the adults go on feeding the chick until the next breeding season.

After rains, the puddles next to the road become full of frogs and the Palmnut Vulture then collects up to 20 or 30 frogs at a time, and stores them in a tree “pantry”.
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