Red-billed Hornbill

The Red-billed Hornbills are a group of hornbills found in savanna and woodland of sub-Saharan Africa They are now usually split into five species, the Northern Red-billed Hornbill (T. erythrorhynchus), Western Red-billed Hornbill (T. kempi), Tanzanian Red-billed Hornbill (T. ruahae), Southern Red-billed Hornbill (T. rufirostris) and Damara Red-billed Hornbill (T. damarensis), but some authorities considered them all to be subspecies of a single species.

Waterberg National Park is a national park in central Namibia on the Waterberg Plateau, 68 km east of Otjiwarongo.

The Waterburg Plateau is a particularly prominent location, elevating high above the plains of the Kalahari of Eastern Namibia. Waterburg Park and some 405 km² of surrounding land were declared a Nature Reserve in 1972. The plateau is largely inaccessible so in the early 1970s several of Namibia's endangered species were soon translocated there to protect them from predators and poaching to extinction. The programme was very successful and Waterberg now supplies other Namibian parks with rare animals. In 1989, Black Rhinoceros was reintroduced to the area from Damaraland.

The Waterberg Plateau National Park is ecologically diverse and rich and has over 200 different species of bird with some rare species of small antelope on the lower hills of the mountain.

Geologically, the oldest rock stratum is over 850 million years old and dinosaurs tracks were left there some 200 million years ago.

The first human inhabitants were the San people, who left rock engravings believed to be several thousand years old. A small tribe of the San were still living their traditional lifestyle on the plateau until the late 1960s.

The foothills were the site of one of the major turning points in Namibia's history. In 1904, in the Battle of Waterberg, the Herero people lost their last and greatest battle against German Colonial forces. Subsequently, in the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, nearly two thirds of the Herero population lost their lives, and about one thousand could escape to British Bechuanaland (now Botswana), where they received asylum. The graves of German soldiers who lost their lives at Waterberg can still be viewed near the Bernabe De La Bat rest camp at the base of the park.

Hornbills (Bucerotidae) are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly colored and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible. Both the common English and the scientific name of the family refer to the shape of the bill, "buceros" being "cow horn" in Greek. In addition, they possess a two-lobed kidney. Hornbills are the only birds in which the first two neck vertebrae (the axis and atlas) are fused together; this probably provides a more stable platform for carrying the bill. The family is omnivorous, feeding on fruit and small animals. They are monogamous breeders nesting in natural cavities in trees and sometimes cliffs. A number of species of hornbill are threatened with extinction, mostly insular species with small ranges.

Birds (class Aves or clade Avialae) are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. With around 10,000 living species, they are the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. All present species belong to the subclass Neornithes, and inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds emerged within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago. Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.

Fauna of Africa, in its broader sense, is all the animals living on the African continent and its surrounding seas and islands. The more characteristic African fauna is found in the Afrotropical ecoregion - formerly called Ethiopian (the Sub-Saharan Africa). Lying almost entirely within the tropics, and equally to north and south of the equator creates favourable conditions for rich wildlife.

This list of African birds is a listing of all the bird species known from the continent of Africa.

The taxonomy of this list adheres to James Clements' Birds of the World: A Checklist, and reflects all changes to that work until July, 2005. Taxonomic changes are on-going. As more research is gathered from studies of distribution, behavior, and DNA, the order and number of families and species may change. Furthermore, different approaches to ornithological nomenclature have led to concurrent systems of classification (see Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy).

The area covered by this list is the same as the Africa region defined by the American Birding Association's listing rules. It includes Socotra in the Arabian Sea, São Tomé and Annobon in the Gulf of Guinea, and the Canary Islands, but excludes Madeira. The region does not include Madagascar or the Comoro Islands.

Order: Sphenisciformes. Family: Spheniscidae

Order: Gaviiformes. Family: Gaviidae

The wildlife of Namibia is composed of its flora and fauna. Namibia's endangered species include Wild Dog, Black Rhino, Oribi and Puku.

Wildlife photography is the act of taking photographs of wildlife.

Wildlife photography is regarded as one of the more challenging forms of photography. As well as needing sound technical skills, such as being able to expose correctly, wildlife photographers generally need good field craft skills. For example, some animals are difficult to approach and thus a knowledge of the animal's behavior is needed in order to be able to predict their actions. Photographing some species may require stalking skills or the use of a hide/blind for concealment.

While wildlife photographs can be taken using basic equipment, successful photography of some types of wildlife requires specialist equipment, such as macro lenses for insects, long focal length lenses for birds and underwater cameras for marine life. However, a great wildlife photograph can also be the result of being in the right place at the right time.

In the early days of photography, it was almost impossible to get a photograph of wildlife, due to the slow lenses and the low sensitivity of early photographic media.

The beak, bill or rostrum is an external anatomical structure of birds which is used for eating and for grooming, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for food, courtship and feeding young. The terms beak and rostrum are also used to refer to a similar mouthpart in some Ornithischian dinosaurs, monotremes, cephalopods (see Cephalopod beak), cetaceans, billfishes, pufferfishes, turtles, Anuran tadpoles and sirens.

Although beaks vary significantly in size, shape and color, they share a similar underlying structure. Two bony projections—the upper and lower mandibles—are covered with a thin keratinized layer of epidermis known as the rhamphotheca. In most species, two holes known as nares lead to the respiratory system.