The Hadedah - a noisy success story

Hadedahs are amongst the commonest, and are certainly the most noisy, birds
on the Hilton College Campus. Hadedahs are one of South Africa's
commonest birds.

They weren't always so common. Hadedahs have spread into large parts of
this country in the last 50 years. Why?

A Hadedah's natural home is a place with large trees with open space underneath,
where they can dig around for food. As towns and cities expand, people plant
lawns and grow trees, which are just the right habitat for the Hadedah.

Lawns are often full of crickets and worms, and the dead leaves under trees
hide other insects that these birds love to eat.



So the success of the Hadedah has probably been caused by increased
urbanisation and development. It's interesting that development
is bad for some birds, like Blue Swallows, (which need large grassland
areas to forage) yet favours birds like the Hadedah.