I bet, that right now, Ben Schwartz is thinking “bloody hell, I sent these photos in yonks ago. I thought they must have gone into their spam folder or something”.
Everything comes to he/she/they who waits Ben. And it just goes to show (a) how long our publication queue is and (b) my extraordinary inefficiency at getting these things on to the site.
Anyway, the answer to the question posed above is Weaver birds, that’s who. Ben has just*1 returned from a trip to Namibia where he took great pleasure in photographing these Sociable Weaver birds and also the giraffe you see in front of the poles. He told us: “This species of bird is endemic to southern Africa and they build enormous community nests on trees and similar tall objects, including telegraph poles.*2 “
“Interestingly, I learned about the Society (TPAS) from the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, which shared the fact that telegraph poles in the African bush have minimum height restrictions to avoid becoming a danger to giraffes and you can see from the photos that there is plenty of clearance in this case. Sadly, high voltage lines still appear to be a threat in some parts of the continent: “
Look away now if you don’t want to see pictures of dead giraffes that got caught in power lines. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56153746
Anyway, thanks Ben, we appreciators appreciate your appreciation of these fine birds.
*1 Due to items (a) & (b) in para 2, Ben has no longer “just” returned from Namibia, it is now probably best described as long since.
*2 Yes, we know, they’re power poles, not telegraph poles. But remember our mantra? If it’s tall, wooden, sticky-uppy, got wires coming out the top etc….
