Over the coming weekend, there will be a daily report on the 2010 SAFRING Ringers Conference on the SAFRING website. The first report is already there.

This conference represents the biggest gathering of people at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary for many years. This site was once one of the world's most renowned centres of excellence in waterbird research. Sadly, about 20 years ago it fell into disuse. Currently, the North West Parks and Tourism Board, aided by the ADU, is working hard to restore Barberspan to its former glory. The 2010 SAFRING Ringers' Conference is part of the rebuilding process.

The ADU will have a stand at the SANBI 2010 Biodiversity Expo, Thursday 25–Sunday 28 March, 09h00–16h00, at Kirstenbosch; take a look at the full details. Besides the ADU, there will at least another 30 conservation organisations exhibiting on various biodiversity issues ranging from threatened species to calculating your carbon footprint.

The ADU stand will have staff/students on duty all the time. Come and meet us there and have a natter with us. The Expo is in the Old Mutual Conference Centre at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, and entry is free. On the Sunday, Dr Guy Midgley, one of South Africa's leading experts on climate change will be doing a presentation. Guy was one of the driving forces behind the Environmental Change Booklet we produced at the end of last year for the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and he was part of the South African delegation.

Antje Steinfurth’s passion for penguins led to her employment as a lecturer with One Ocean Expeditions this summer in Antarctica. Starting in the town of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, recognized as “the end of the world”, she sailed on the Akademik Ioffe, a Russian research vessel, on three voyages across the Southern Ocean towards the White Continent, passing the Falkland Islands and South Georgia on her way down south.

Of the seven penguin species seen on the voyage, five were new species to her: "The Chinstrap catapulted himself into my Top Three. They don’t walk, they don’t waddle, they skip!

"But the ocean voyage was as exciting as the arrival at these places themselves. Albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters were accompanying the ship, skimming the waves and riding the air currents on their long wings all along the journey. Crossing the Polar Front different bird species appeared in sheer abundance: Cape Petrels and clouds of small, ghostly grey-white prions that flitted like little acrobats above the surface of the water, providing identification challenges for even the keenest birder. And then finally south of 60 degrees, the Antarctic and Snow Petrels (or Angel of Antarctica) gave us a warm welcome to Antarctica!

"Antarctica for me was beyond words – it overwhelmed me – the camera caught some of it but the power of the landscape, the animals, the penguins – but not to the point of what I felt!"

After surviving the (wish for the best, prepare for the worst) Drake Passage five times, Antje arrived back home in Cape Town last week – physically rather than mentally, though. Now she continues her research on the foraging strategies and energetic requirements of the African Penguin in the Western Cape.

Magda Remisiewicz and Joel Avni have been at Barberspan Nature Reserve for a week already doing fieldwork and getting everything ready for the SAFRING Ringers' Conference this coming weekend. They have with them Sara Lipshutz, currently a semester abroad student at UCT, coming from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

They asked  Sara to describe her experiences: "Things here at Barberspan are going great. So far, we’ve ringed 136 individuals of 18 different species. Fortunately for Magda and me, the most common species are our targets – Little Stint and Kittlitz’s Plover. We got some really amazing catches – a juvenile Greater Flamingo [see the picture], a Cattle Egret, and a White-breasted Cormorant. Magda and Joel are busy working with the field rangers to prepare for the conference, and I’m getting to know a LOT more about birds – different species, their habitats, behaviors, calls, etc. I’ve seen 99 different species so far, and can’t wait to keep on birding!"

There is now only camping available for the Ringers' Conference. See the SAFRING website.

The seventh newsletter of the Hadeda Ibis Project is available today. It was produced by MSc student Greg Duckworth. Greg's project is to try to understand the reasons why the Hadeda Ibis has expanded its range so much. That provides us with an excuse to show the range change map between SABAP1 and SABAP2 for this species. The BLUE quarter degree grid cells indicate that the Hadeda Ibis has expanded its range further in the arid regions in the northwest of South Africa, also along the Orange River. The predominance of GREEN indicates that, mostly, reporting rates for SABAP2 are greater than they were for SABAP1.