Both redbilled oxpeckers and yellowbilled oxpeckers have experienced recent population decreases in Southern Africa largely as a result of cattle dipping against ticks, their primary source of food. In Namibia oxpeckers are confined largely to the Caprivi region in the north-east and the yellowbilled oxpecker is classified as a Namibian Red Data species. There have been no official cattle dipping programmes in Caprivi, and private tick control is virtually non-existent. We suggest that the current dry conditions, in combination with the increasingly widespread and more frequent practice of veld burning is having a substantial, differential effect on some of the tick species favoured by the two species of oxpeckers. We hypothesise that these two factors act as a control mechanism on ticks favoured by yellowbilled oxpeckers, so precipitating the dramatic decline of this species.