Creature of the month

A few months ago I received two visitors who later constructed their house in my back yard. The two are a pair of Hamerkop birds known for setting up the biggest nest among birds. The guys set up the huge nest (mansion) on one of the mature Ficus without asking for permission. In addition to counting Egrets that fly over our roof twice everyday, I’ve now got an extra morning task of monitoring the interesting activities of the new visitors which include dancing, singing and rigorous collection of building materials for their tree mansion. The nest is so far about half a meter in diameter and could exceed a meter in a few weeks time. However, some colleagues still associate the bird to misfortune hence giving it some unintended scare protection. We are now expecting more of such visitors in the backyard especially as Lubigi wetland slowly but surely gets degraded. Don’t say I am biased but I vote for the Hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) to be our creature of the month. Please send in nominations for creature of the month of June, it could be an insect, bird, water body, animal name it.