Kori Bustard

Fascinating facts about the Kori Bustard

• A male kori bustard can weigh 15 kilograms — making it the heaviest flying bird in Africa and among the heaviest birds that can still take flight on Earth. Despite this, their wings span 2.6 metres across, creating enough lift to launch their bulk skyward. Getting airborne takes a long runway of running and flapping; once airborne, they're surprisingly graceful.
• When a male kori bustard courts a female, he inflates his throat pouch until it droops like a water balloon, puffs his chest feathers into a grotesque ball, and struts in slow circles — all while making a booming, guttural call that carries across the African savanna. The display lasts hours and burns enormous energy. Females watch silently from nearby, unmoved by most suitors; males fail far more often than they succeed.
• Kori bustards spend most of their day walking slowly through dry grasslands in eastern and southern Africa, pausing every few steps to peck at the ground. They're after insects — especially locusts and beetles — and small reptiles, swallowing them whole. A single bird might consume hundreds of insects in a morning. This ground-feeding lifestyle makes them vulnerable to trampling by livestock and habitat loss.
• Unlike many large birds, kori bustards are almost silent for most of the year. They don't nest in colonies, defend territories loudly, or migrate. Instead, they move quietly across vast ranges, sometimes 50 square kilometres or more, as seasons shift. Their invisibility in the soundscape makes them easy to overlook — and easy to lose track of as populations decline.
• Kori bustards live 20+ years in the wild, reproduce slowly (raising only one chick every two years at best), and have no natural predators once airborne. Yet their numbers are dropping across Africa due to habitat conversion and hunting pressure. Their vulnerability isn't speed or size — it's that their slow life cycle can't outpace human-driven habitat loss, making their conservation dependent on protecting vast stretches of intact savanna.

At a glance

About the Kori Bustard

In the sun-baked savannas, the Kori Bustard reigns as a majestic and elusive monarch, its soft, grey-brown plumage blending seamlessly into the dusty landscape as it strides purposefully across the grasslands, its long, powerful legs eating up the distance with a slow, deliberate gait. With each step, its sharp eyes scan the terrain for the slightest sign of movement, ever-vigilant for the insects, reptiles, and small mammals that make up its varied and opportunistic diet. As it moves, its very presence seems to embody the wild, untamed spirit of the African wilderness, a fleeting glimpse of a bygone era.

Discover more wildlife