The Sunday Mail
Stranger than Fiction
Tendai Chara
THE African hammerhead (kondo in Shona) is a long-legged bird that wades in shallow water in search of food. With brown plumage and a head that looks like a hammer, hence its name, the hammerhead is a distinctive, legendary and mysterious bird that often exhibits strange and unusual behaviour.
Since ancient times, this bird has been associated with a number of bad things, chief among them lightning, leprosy and death.
In most parts of Zimbabwe and other African countries, it is taboo to kill, let alone eat the meat of this feared and mysterious legend.
Among some of the unusual behaviours of the hammerhead is its tendency to build nests that are unnecessarily big. According to an online publication, the nest of a hammerhead can be as wide as 1,5 metres and be made up of as many as 10 000 sticks, taking 10 to 14 weeks to construct (see picture on the right)
It is estimated that the nests are big and strong enough for a full grown man to sit. Yet only a medium-sized bird that lays between three to seven eggs resides there. The nests are usually perched on the forks of very large trees or on protruding granite outcrops. These birds construct several such nests during the course of the year, giving rise to beliefs that the hammerhead is helped by other birds to construct these often brightly coloured huge nests. How the bird co-ordinates and convinces other birds to help it in the construction is as mythical as the majority of the things that are associated with the kondo. Although hammerheads are generally loners, they are known to perform weird and unusual “ceremonial dances” whenever they congregate. Often numbering more than 10, they gather and run in circles, fluttering their wings and making all sorts of noises. The birds also have the odd behaviour of performing false mounting in which they stand on top of each other without copulating.
In some parts of Africa, hammerheads are still believed to be messengers of death. It is believed that if a hammerhead flies over a homestead and shrieks, it will be announcing the death of a close relative. Tampering with the bird’s nest is believed to have disastrous consequences. In some parts of Manicaland, it is believed that if a person tampers with a hammerhead’s nest, they will go mad. Online sources indicate that among the Kalahari Bushmen, this bird is also known as a lightning bird as they believe that if someone attempts to rob the nest, they will be struck by lightning.
In South Africa, the bird is associated with witchcraft. It is believed that it is used by witches and witch doctors in their dark trades. Therefore, the bird is seen as “evil”. Basing on the bird’s strange characteristics, it is very easy to forgive those that view the bird as legendary, mysterious and evil. Although there is a general misconception that the hammerhead is one-eyed, zoologists maintain that the bird has two eyes.
