Yesterday marked the launch of a new e-journal, Ornithological Observations - http://oo.adu.org.za/. This journal is published online, by BirdLife South Africa and the Animal Demography Unit at UCT and is of a semi-scientific nature. It is edited by Arnold van der Westhuizen, PhD student and ardent ADU/BLSA project participant.

Its main aim is for scientists and citizen scientists alike to submit interesting observations of bird related matters (behaviour, nesting activities, foraging behaviour, annotated checklists etc.) in a reader-friendly format that is accessible to the public and the scientific community. One regularly encounters interesting bird behaviours, or nesting habits, or movement patterns  and it is these anecdotal observations which often do not get into the broader scientific and popular literature. But by getting these observations published in a short, user-friendly format they contribute valuable information to our bird knowledge base that can be used in future editions of Roberts's Birds of southern Africa. 

Submissions for OO are encouraged from southern Africa but articles and short papers can be submitted from anywhere around the world. Getting the article from submission to publication is hoped to be a quick process as papers will not be peer-reviewed but the editorial committee will ensure that a high-standard is maintained. Templates have been provided to make the writing process as streamlined as possible. And even if you do not want to write anything you can visit the site frequently for interesting reads on our birdlife.

For more information please visit the OO website. There are already two articles that can be viewed and downloaded as pdf files. These will give you a nice feel for the style and format that is used for OO submissions.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and making OO a successful media platform for birders and scientists!

One of the most recent recoveries reported to SAFRING was a White-backed Vulture. This bird was found by Themba Nkuna who wrote: “I found a dead White backed Vulture outside our White Lion Boma today (11/08/2008). I am at Hoedspruit at the White Lion Trust farm coordinates. It seems the bird might have died from colliding with our diamond mesh fence two to three days ago after being scared by lions when stealing the meat. The bird had two Yellow tags code: A028 and 027216502621 at the back of the tag. The code on the ring which was on the right foot is G 26512.  Unfortunately I didn't have a tape measure to measure the bill, feet and wing span, I believe you have that.” This vulture was ringed by Andre Botha of the EWT Birds of Prey Working Group at Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre on 29 January 2007. The vulture moved at least 28 km and this movement may be viewed here.

Not only is this vulture one of the most recent recoveries, the first birds ringed in southern Africa were vultures. 31 Cape Vultures were ringed exactly 62 years previously in August 1948. 

Vulture ring G26512 was recovered less than a month before the International Vulture Awareness day on 4 September 2010. This awareness day will focus the attention on the dire plight of many of the world's vultures and highlight the awareness and regional activities of organisations who participate in vulture conservation. Details are available on the BirdLife SA web.

The 13th Pan-African Ornithological Congress will take place in Jos, Nigeria, from 14–21 October 2012. Jos is right of the middle of Nigeria, in the central highlands of the country, on the Jos Plateau. The A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI) is located on the outskirts of Jos, adjacent to the Amurum Forest, one of Nigeria's Important Bird Areas. Two range-restricted species occur in the forest: Jos Plateau Indigo bird Vidua maryae and its host the Rock Firefinch Lagonosticta sanguinodorsalis. The area has an impressive species list, and more than 260 species have been recorded breeding within the Amurum Forest. So save the dates. Further details to follow.

Google Maps streetview has recorded weaver colonies close to roads that they photographed. One example is of a Cape Weaver colony at Rondevlei, Cape Town. Find the colony here and zoom in at the marker until the streetview appears. You can view the colony from different angles. About 13 nests are visible, but unfortunately no date is available for this record. This particular colony has been monitored since 2006 and several times photos were taken. These photos may be viewed at the ADU Virtual Museum - click on "Projects" in the menu on the left, click on the project header "Photos of Weaver Nests", then enter 70 in the "Search" box at the top to see the first record of this colony - enter any number from 70 to 75 to see all the current records of this colony, spanning from 2006 to recently.

To take part in PHOWN read here. 

The 25th International Ornithological Congress (IOC) is currently taking place in Brazil, in the town of Campos do Jordão in the state of São Paulo. One of the most conspicuous birds flying around this town is the Maroon-bellied Parakeet Pyrrhura leucotis, pictured alongside.

The six-day conference has 1200 delegates, with a total of 20 from South Africa, of whom two, PhD student Yahkat Barshep and myself are from the ADU. This is the first time the IOC has been hosted in South America. Africa had its first turn in 1998, when it was held in Durban. The IOC is the world's oldest scientific conference; the first was held in Vienna, Austria, in 1884. IOCs take place every four years; the previous one in 2006 was in Germany and the next one, in 2014, will be in Japan.

I did my presentation yesterday – it was in a symposium on climate change. A symposium consists of five linked presentations on a theme, and at any one time there are seven symposia to choose from! My talk was about the timing of Barn Swallow migration, using year-by-year results from SABAP1 (1987–1991) and SABAP2 (2008–2010). With eight years of results on the timing of departure, five from SABAP1 and three from SABAP2, there appears to be no change in when Barn Swallows leave South Africa. There are seven years of arrival results (five from SABAP1 and 2008 and 2009 from SABAP2) – tentatively it looks as if arrival is about two weeks later now. But we will need a few more years of data before we can come to a statistically valid decision.

My audience was greatly impressed by what SABAP2 is achieving on a year-by-year basis. In other words they were impressed at the achievements of Team SABAP2, and this is why the SABAP2 mini-projects, which measure the time of arrival of migrants in autumn and spring (LAMP, WHAMB, PHEAT and the current PHESTIVAL) are so important – nowhere else is anything on quite the same scale as SABAP2 being done, and nowhere else is able to present crisp results.

While we are at the Seventh International Penguin Conference in Boston, the Earthwatch Institute has arranged for Les Underhill, ADU Director, and Peter Barham, University of Bristol and ADU Honorary Research Associate, to give a public lecture there. The flyer alongside states: "Earthwatch Institute and Harvard University proudly present: Saving the Penguins of Robben Island, South Africa on Monday, August 30, 2010, from 6:30–7:30pm in the Harvard-Allston Education Portal, Boston.

"In the Earthwatch Institute's first public lecture in the Allston-Brighton Community, Prof Peter Barham (University of Bristol, United Kingdom) and Prof Les Underhill (University of Cape Town, South Africa) will discuss their continuing work on the worst oil spill in South Africa's history. These leading experts will discuss how together with Earthwatch volunteers, they are helping to reduce the impact of various threats on Robben Island, South Africa, where 13 000 penguins were oiled in 2000."

The Earthwatch Institute has a South African Penguins project on Robben Island. The project completed 10 years of fieldwork in 2010, and the Earthwatch Institute is currently recruiting six teams of four volunteers each.

PhD student Yahkat Barshep has a poster at the 25th International Ornithological Congress in Brazil next week. It presents the results of the fieldwork she did between finishing her MSc at the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute at the Univeristy of Jos, Nigeria, and starting her PhD on Curlew Sandpipers in the ADU.

The poster is Non-breeding ecology of the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra in Nigeria and the abstract says: "We present the results of a study conducted on the non-breeding ecology of the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, in one of its African wintering grounds in central Nigeria. The core study site was at Gwafan (9°53'N, 8°57'E), an open scrubland habitat located 10 km east of the city of Jos. The density of Whinchats around Jos was estimated using line transect surveys and compared with the density of Whinchat at Gwafan. Time budget observations described the daily activities of 17 colour-banded Whinchats [here is the team about to set up their mistnets], including six birds fitted with radio-transmitters. Overall density in the Jos area was estimated at 0.21 individuals/ha, but density at Gwafan was 0.58 individuals/ha indicating that this contained preferred habitat. Whinchats spent 80% of their time perching, 11% foraging, 7% preening and 2% flying. The main method of catching insects was a swoop to the ground. There was no change in perching, preening or flying time from the time the study started in February to the time it ended in April. GPS positions of individuals showed that all birds held clearly demarcated territories and defended this area against whinchats in neighbouring territories. Aggressive interactions were also recorded between whinchats and other bird species. Three birds colour-ringed in 2006 returned to the study site in 2007 and one occupied almost the same territory in 2007 as held in 2006 indicating site fidelity."

The ADU adds value to the data collected by our citizen scientists through a chain with a series of links. The first link is to collate all the individual data contributions into a queryable database. Currently, the ADU database contains 15 million biodiversity records. The next step is to summarize the raw data into information. This information gets into the scientific marketplace as presentations at conferences and publications in journals. Most academic research stops there. The ADU tries to add another link to the chain, to make the science accessible to a far wider audience. The booklet we launched yesterday is an example of this.

The Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts (CAR) project involves some 700 citizen scientists counting large terrestrial birds – cranes, bustards and korhaans, storks, ... – every January and June, and mainly in farmland. James Harrison (SABAP1 coordinator) and Donella Young have taken the accumulated data through all the links of the chain, and have distilled this into the practical lessons that will help improve the conservation status of these species on the agricultural estate. 80% of South Africa is managed by the farming community, so they have a critical role to play in biodiversity conservation in the country. "The farmer is the custodian and steward of our natural wealth and heritage, and we South Africans live in the country that is ranked as the world's third richest in wildlife!" James and Donella have summarized the key actions that farmers can take into 12 ideas, the "Desirable Dozen" things "that landowners can do to contribute meaningfully to the conservation of wildlife, including large terrestrial birds, on their lands." The booklet is available as a pdf on the ADU website (at "conservation resources" on the left hand side menu), both in English: Farming for the Future (2.5MB) and in Afrikaans: Boer vir die Toekoms (2.8 MB). The booklet unpacks the concepts of the "Desirable Dozen" into practical suggestions, and discusses some of the key bird species on farmland: Blue Crane, Denham's Bustard, Southern Black Korhaan, White Stork, ...

With the assistance of McDowell Trust for the Protection and Conservation of Flora and Fauna, JAH Environmental Consultancy, LandCare and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, we have been able to print several thousand copies of the booklet on paper in both languages, and these will be distributed by LandCare to farmers in the Overberg and Swartland. The species considered in the booklet have a Western Cape emphasis, but the concepts and actions embodied in the "Desirable Dozen" have global relevance.

There is a big gang of ADU staff, students, postdocs and honorary research associates going to the Seventh International Penguin Conference in Boston, USA, from 29 August to 3 September, and to the First World Seabird Conference in Victoria, Canada, just afterwards from 7 to 11 September. The total number of presentations is 21, and just the titles are listed below. More details, eg the co-authors of each presentation can be downloaded here.

Non-invasive monitoring of individual colonial sea birds using computer vision: scope and limitations of an emerging demographic method exemplified on African penguins and bank cormorants.

The importance of both abundance and distribution of prey in accounting for food requirements of predators in an ecosystem approach to fisheries – examples from southern Africa.

South Africa’s penguins collapse following intensified competition with fisheries for food, thought attributable to environmental change.

Penguin status in troubled oceans.

Is climate change affecting the Galápagos Penguin?

Return of the pink brigade: Monitoring rehabilitation success and return of African Penguins oiled in Namibia and released in South Africa after rehabilitation.

Penguins without borders: oiled African Penguins rescued and cleaned in Namibia are rehabilitated in South Africa.

Influence of nesting habitat on breeding success of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus at Robben Island, South Africa.

Foraging behaviour of Rockhopper Penguins during different breeding stages at New Island, Falkland Islands.

Foraging and diet of endangered Bank Cormorants at Mercury Island, Namibia.

The first Namibian Islands' Marine Protected Area: a conservation measure for endangered seabirds in the Benguela Upwelling System.

The first Namibian Islands' Marine Protected Area: a conservation measure for endangered seabirds in the Benguela Upwelling System.

Patterns of attendance of African Penguins at colonies.

A new approach to track analysis: evaluating the scales of movement of foraging penguins.

Hand-rearing and release of African Penguin chicks abandoned by moulting parents in the Westen Cape, South Africa, 2001–2009.

Computer vision monitoring of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus: new data on the field capacity from Robben Island.

Don't bank on a seaview: Is unsuitable habitat limiting breeding success of an endemic cormorant on Robben Island, South Africa?

Spatial and temporal variation in growth and condition of African penguin chicks at five colonies in South Africa.

Breeding behaviour of the Galápagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus): Implications for conservation.

Predatory impact of feral cats (Felis catus) on the Galápagos Penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) at its main breeding site, Caleta Iguana, Isabela Island, Galápagos.

African penguin breeders and adult moulters: colony relationships to surrounding fish stocks.

The ADU will be represented by PhD student Yahkat Barshep and myself at the 25th International Ornithological Congress next week. The conference takes place in Campos do Jordão, Brazil. Yakhat is presenting a poster Non-breeding biology of the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra in Nigeria based on fieldwork she undertook at the AP Leventis Ornithological Research Institute, University of Jos, Nigeria, where she did her MSc. I am presenting a paper in a symposium on Climate change and long-distance migrant landbirds. My co-authors are Res Altwegg, SANBI, and Kristin Broms, University of Seattle, Washington, who is a wildlife statistician doing her PhD developing models which will help us analyses SABAP2 data. Our paper is titled: Variability in the timing of migration of Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica in South Africa revealed by two bird atlas projects.

ABSTRACT: The first Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP1) took place from 1987–1991, and the second (SABAP2) commenced in 2007. Both projects involved large-scale, year-round collection of presence-absence data by citizen scientists: SABAP1 collected seven million records and SABAP2 project is collecting about one million records annually. Within SABAP2, mini-projects have been conducted to target the collection of high-quality data to quantify the timing of arrival and departure. This facilitates fine-scale analysis of the phenology of migration, especially in relation to climate change. This presentation provides a case study on the timing of migration of the Barn Swallow. Arrival of the barn swallows in South Africa is characterised by a steady increase in abundance with reporting rates increasing in the north of the country approximately two weeks earlier than the south, over a distance of c. 1600 km. Arrival takes place mainly in October and November. In contrast, departure on northward migration is more abrupt, with the entire area being vacated in a period of about one month, mainly in April. The data quality is adequate to enable comparisons in the timing of migration between the two projects, enabling the impacts, if any, of earlier springs in Eurasia to be measured. Our results provisionally demonstrate that the timing of departure from South Africa is unchanged, but that arrival is October-November is delayed by about nine days.

In November-December last year, the UCT Postgraduate Travel Fund sponsored a trip to Chile for PhD student Justine Braby. Her research project focuses on the biology and conservation of the Damara Tern in Namibia. But the Peruvian Tern is one of the seven species of "little tern", which is ecologically similar to the Damara Tern. The Damara Tern breeds in the Namib Desert, the Peruvian Tern in the Atacama Desert. Both are in threat categories: Damara Tern is "Near-threatened", Peruvian Tern is "Endangered". But the Damara Tern has a clutch of one egg, whereas the Peruvian Tern has two. So there are both similarities and differences, and nobody has really had research experience with both. The best place to study the Peruvian Tern turns out not to be in Peru, but in northern Chile. Justine worked with the research group of Professor Carlos Guerra at the University of Antofagasta, which is almost exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn, at the same latitude as Swakopmund, where Justine lives.

While she is based at the ADU putting finishing touches to her PhD, Justine has agreed to give us a slide show showing her experiences in Chile, and especially of the Atacama Desert. The talk will be in the Map Room of the ADU, next Wednesday 18 August at 13h00.

The next ADU seminar is on Wednesday, 11 August, at 13h00 in the Map Room in the ADU (PD Hahn Building, second floor).

Laura-Jayne Robinson and Alistair Glossop will present a talk called South Africa's Involvement in Antarctica: Creation of an Online Archive.

Alistair will begin the presentation by talking about the DAM (Digital Asset Management) system and examining the processes involved in converting the primary product (Camera Raw Images) to the finished product (PDF) and all the steps included in between. Laura-Jayne will talk about the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process and descriptive metadata capture. She will also demonstrate how the website designed for this project functions.

Laura-Jayne and Alistair are based in ADU and they working on a project funded by SANAP (South African National Antarctic Programme) and coordinated by Les Underhill from the ADU and Lance van Sittert from the Department of Historical Studies at UCT. The aim of the project is to create an online archive, to international best standards of practice, of documents related to South Africa's involvement in Antarctica, including the Southern Ocean and the sub-Antarctic islands. It is planned that the online archive will contain images of the documents themselves, descriptive metadata, and a searchable text version, and that this resource will be available to researchers with interests both in history and in biodiversity.

Donella Young reports. Thank you to all who participated in the CAR winter 2010 count last Saturday!

Thank you very much all CAR observers who took to the minor roads on Saturday to count all the big birds visible from 350 routes in agricultural areas. There are 110 CAR routes in the Free State, 65 in the Western Cape, 52 in the Eastern Cape, 48 in KwaZulu-Natal, 27 in Mpumalanga, 25 in Gauteng, 21 in the Northern Cape and now two in North West! For a while we had only one route near Barberspan that was initiated by a farmer and is now counted regularly by field rangers from Barberspan Bird Sanctuary. Nedick Bila, Ornithologist in North West, has initiated another route this last count near Mafikeng. This means that altogether birds along 19 000 km were counted on Saturday! We appreciate all the transport costs that these voluntary “citizen scientists” contribute in gathering this information which is so important for monitoring these species, many of which are threatened. Not to mention the time, skills and energetic enthusiasm of about 800 people out counting for four to six hours! The picture shows Winterton Primary educator, Libby Irons, with learners Tiya Balakisten, Mabahle Mabaso, Tina Mostert and Eduard Niewenhuis counting on route K 11 in KwaZulu-Natal.

This must have been one of the warmest winter counts ever. Thankfully there was no rain anywhere in the country, but there was a strong wind in parts of the Overberg. Here are a few highlights. Andy Nixon leads a route between Wolwefontein and Klipplaat in the Eastern Cape wrote about "Cranes, cranes and more cranes" counted by his team of four people. "Every Blue Crane in the Karoo seemed to be on our route. We counted 421 birds in 17 sightings. There were flocks of 130, 73, 55, 46 and 25. Also another hundred or so birds in dribs and drabs. In the flock of 130 birds we also saw a very out of range Grey Crowned Crane. This is the first record of this bird in the Karoo as far as I know. We also had 14 Ludwig's Bustards, sightings of eight Karoo Korhaans and saw/heard nine Southern Black Korhaans." Inés Cooke, who organises the Overberg counts in Western Cape reported that Keith and Michele Moodie, who cycled their route, counted 1355 Blue Cranes! John Carter, who also counts in the Overberg, wrote on Capebirdnet: "We had a good count yesterday with our second best count of cranes (298) in the last 13 years south and east of Stormsvlei." Mel Tripp also wrote on the capebirdnet about his count north and west of Moorreesburg in the Swartland region of Western Cape: "Two over wintering White Storks of course is interesting, however, what was exceptional, was that on checking the SABAP2 website White Storks have NEVER BEEN RECORDED IN THESE TWO PENTADS 3300_1830 (25 cards) and 3300_1835 (26 cards) EVEN IN SUMMER and these pentads are quite heavily atlased." In KwaZulu-Natal, Gayle Ellison saw 93 Grey-Crowned Cranes on her Underberg route, while Graham Kletz, who has been doing monthly counts of his route in the same precinct was surprised he didn't see any on Saturday. This highlights the importance of counting a number of routes in an area to gather as many "samples/transects" as possible as these birds do move.

Ronelle Visagie sent me this photo of the new powerline towards the end of her route in the Eastern Karoo. Large terrestrial birds are particularly vulnerable as they aren't able to take avoidance action in time, especially when visibility is poor.

Yvonne Craig, who coordinates the Humansdorp precinct wrote "Of grave concern is the number of wind farms that have been proposed for this area. We know of nine definite applications and some of them are right in crane and bustard territory. One will lie between two estuaries, on a route used by large terrestrial birds as well as flamingos and migrants." Later this month Doug Harebottle and I will be attending a workshop organized by Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and BirdLife South Africa in response to the "need to have greater input into the planning of wind farms in South Africa if we are to ensure that the wind energy industry is not developed to the detriment of our birds." So thank you so much for being the "eyes and ears" for conservation not only on the CAR day, but all through the year. Report all powerline collisions to EWT's Wildlife and Energy Programme and Eskom Strategic Partnership on 0860 111 535 or wep@ewt.org.za

PhD student Sally Hofmeyr is attending the annual "Fynbos Forum" meeting, being held this year in Citrusdal from 3–6 August. This year's meeting has, as its theme, "The International Year of Biodiversity". Sally is presenting a talk, based on her PhD research, at the forum on Thursday: The Southern Black Korhaan: a fynbos species in trouble.

ABSTRACT: Southern Black Korhaan Afrotis afra has recently been split from the Northern Black Korhaan A. afraoides. Whereas A. afraoides is widespread and common in several countries, A. afra is endemic to South Africa and largely restricted to karoo and fynbos habitats, and recent anecdotal evidence suggests that the species is in decline. Analysis of data from the Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts (CAR) project, a volunteer participation project run by the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) confirms this, revealing a rapid decrease in the population in the Swartland and Overberg. Comparison of data from the Southern African Bird Atlas Projects (SABAP1 and SABAP2), using occupancy modelling, adds further weight to this conclusion, and suggests that the decline has been especially severe in the Fynbos and Succulent Karoo biomes. The areas most affected appear to those on the edges of the Fynbos biome, where quarter degree grid cells are between 50 and 75% fynbos. The region occupied by A. afra is predicted to be severely affected by climate change, and possible reasons for the species’ decline to date include climate change, land-use change, and the increase in abundance of some avian predators within A. afra’s range, for example the Pied Crow Corvus albus.

A large team of ADU people are heading off later in this month to the Seventh International Penguin Conference, to be held this year in the northern hemisphere for the first time, at the New England Aquarium in Boston, USA. More details of the ADU contribution closer to the date.

First to leave, early next week, is PhD student Lauren Waller. Lauren's works for CapeNature, and her PhD research has been focused on the conservation issues facing the African Penguin, especially at Dyer Island, a CapeNature reserve.

Lauren's trip to the USA is being sponsored by the Newport Aquarium, and she is giving a presentation there a few days before the conference starts. See the Newport Aquarium website for details: "An evening with South African penguin biologist Lauren Waller. She'll speak at the Newport Aquarium about her work with this endangered species and discuss how penguin populations are barometers of the health of the planet. 7 p.m. Aug. 25. Tickets $15. VIP reception/cocktail tickets: $35."

We are enormously grateful to the Newport Aquarium for this sponsorship which enables Lauren to attend the Penguin Conference.

PHOWN (Photos of Weaver Nests; pronounced "phone") is a new ADU Virtual Museum project, where weaver nests or colonies may be photographed and submitted. To take part in this project, you need to register as an ADU participant. Then find weaver nests and take photos and count the nests. Read more details about how to take part by reading here. Any weaver species (Ploceidae family) may be photographed, including introduced populations that breed naturally in the wild.

You can also take part in the other ADU Virtual Museums, all designed by Rene Navarro.

You can view submissions (without being registered) by going here. There are different search possibilities - explore these yourself! There are already 23 records of a variety of southern African weavers. The first one submitted was by Les Underhill of Southern Masked Weavers breeding on a barbed wire fence.

One outcome of a workshop held immediately prior to the Pan-African Ornithological Congress two years ago is this paper. Conferences bring visitors from different places together. Dr Phoebe Barnard, SANBI, took the opportunity to assemble Brian Huntley, David Hole and Steve Willis from the University of Durham in the UK, and Lynda Chambers from Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Lesley Gibson from Department of Environment and Conservation in Western Australia, and a bunch of locals. We talked about new ways to model how the distributions of species might evolve and respond to climate change. Such models would be useful, because they can help us develop conservation strategies that will enhance species' opportunities to adapt to climatic change. What is needed is a new generation of robust predictive models which will improve our understanding of how species and communities might respond to climatic change. One of the crucial ingredients of these models is the best possible information on current distributions of species. This is one of the many reasons why SABAP2 is so important. The paper produced as a result of the workshop was published today in the journal Ecography:

Huntley B, Barnard P, Altwegg R, Chambers L, Coetzee BWT, Gibson L, Hockey PAR, Hole DG, Midgley GF, Underhill LG, Willis SG 2010. Beyond bioclimatic envelopes: Dynamic species’ range and abundance modelling in the context of climatic change. Ecography 33: 621–626.

You can get the pdf of the paper from me.

Silvia Mecenero, who heads up the butterfly atlas project SABCA, has just produced the midyear edition of the project newsletter. The newsletter provides feedback about SABCA, and especially reports that the Butterfly Atlas Virtual Museum contains 13 400 records and that the project's overall database contains 400 000 records. The photograph is from the Virtual Museum; it is a caterpillar of a butterfly called the False Chief by Michael Purves, who contributed 239 records to the VM over the past three months.

SABCA, which expands to the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessement, is a joint project of the ADU with LepSoc, the Lepidopterists' Association of Africa, and with SANBI, the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

Today the Eastern Cape reached 30% coverage - 668 of the 2254 pentads now have at least one checklist.

Together with the Northern Cape, this province has enormous challenges, particularly the area encompassed by the old Transkei, but as you can see by the coverage map, there are encouraging signs: nearly the entire length of the coastline has been covered and there are even splashes of coverage in the interior of the Transkei; carpets are growing in a north-westerly direction from East London and northwards from Kenton-on-Sea which will hopefully meet sometime in the not too distant future, and observers are going deep in the major built-up areas turing many pentads red, purple or pink.

Well done to all atlasers in the province, and in particular Phil Whittington, Jeff Curnick, Gerrie Horn, Arnold vd Westhuizen, Gertie Griffith, Shaun Peard, Roddy Furlong, Albert Schultz and Kate Webster, for putting in such a grand effort to get the coverage to 30%. With some dedicated trips to gaps areas in the pipeline, coverage should slowly gain momentum and perhaps by the end of the year 230 new pentads would have been covered to move the Eastern Cape to 40%.

Keep up the great work!

When sick and injured seabirds are sent to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) for rehabilitation, birds are screened for the presence of blood parasites, technically called haematozoa. Some of these blood parasites are potentially life-threatening to the birds. This screening is done by smearing a tiny drop of blood on a microscope slide and examining it under high magnification. You are searching for a red blood cell that looks like something has gone wrong. This screening process has presented a unique opportunity to examine species of seabirds which are infrequently sampled for haematozoa and in which no species of blood parasites have ever been found. The two species of parasites described in this new paper were found in this way. The lead author of the paper is Nola Parsons, who graduated with a PhD in 2006, and who is now the veterinarian at SANCCOB.

Parsons NJ, Peirce MA, Strauss V 2010. New species of haematozoa in Phalacrocoracidae and Stercorariidae in South Africa. Ostrich 81: 103–108.

ABSTRACT: New species of haematozoa, namely Leucocytozoon ugwidi sp. nov. from the Cape Cormorant Phalacrocorax capensis and Haemoproteus skuae sp. nov. from the Subantarctic Skua Catharacta antarctica, are described. These are the first species to be recorded from the families Phalacrocoracidae and Stercorariidae, respectively.

The pdf of the paper is available from Nola Parsons. Ostrich is published by NISC and is the journal of BirdLife South Africa.

MSc student Greg Duckworth has assembled issue 8 of the Hadeda Hotline, the occasional newsletter to supporters of the Vuvuzela Bird Club. This is the team which searches for Vuvuzela Birds with colour rings. The newsletter reports two great resightings: Vuvuzela Bird with colour rings AL was ringed on 10 October 2006 and resighted on 26 May 2010, but had only moved 3 km within Durbanville, while BL was ringed in Stellenbosch on 1 December 2006 and resighted on 11 May 2010 in Durbanville. Before starting his MSc, Greg did his honours project on how easily Vuvuzela Birds poke their vuvuzelas into damp soil. The resulting paper has been accepted for publication by the journal Diversity and Distributions. The title is Soil moisture limits foraging: a possible mechanism for the range dynamics of the Hadeda Ibis in southern Africa. Details of the project and how you can help are found on the project website.

Mariëtte Wheeler, ADU graduate who was awarded her PhD last December, attended the Association for Early Polar Career Scientists (APECS) career development workshop and the International Polar Year Conference in June in Oslo, Norway. She was sponsorship by the Research Council of Norway and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Mariëtte reports: "The career development workshop was attended by about 150 young researchers and mentors from all over the globe – see the picture. Small break-out sessions during the workshop focused on career skills such as communicating with the media, influencing policy, teaching at university level and outreach to the community. I especially enjoyed a practical session we had about body language when presenting yourself or your work.

"The conference was huge, attended by more than 2000 researchers. What made this conference special was that it focused on research in both the Antarctic and Arctic, in disciplines ranging from meteorology, biology, space science to social science and health care of indigenous people in the Arctic. I presented two oral presentations based on my PhD research: Quantitative Evidence of Wildlife Responses to Human Activities and Evaluating Recommendations for the Management of Activities at Marion Island and The Effects of Research Activities and Pedestrian Approaches on the Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) at Sub-Antarctic Marion Island.

"After the conference, my sister joined me in Oslo. From there we travelled to Bergen and to the North Cape, the northernmost point of Europe. Close to North Cape, we stayed over in a small cabin overlooking the fishing village of Gjesvaer at 71°N. We were fortunate that the midnight sun peeked out from behind the clouds at exactly midnight. The next morning "the Icelady" as I was subsequently dubbed, took a swim in the Barents Sea. Very cold, but a dream made true! At Gjesvaer, we also took a boat trip to the nesting colony at Gjesvaerstappan where we saw puffins, kittiwakes, guillemots and gannets in their numbers (the total number of birds there is estimated between 2.3 and 3 million birds), two sea eagles, grey seals and common seals.

"This trip broadened my horizons, both literally and figuratively. I have now been further north than what I have been south (Marion Island is at 46°S). And I gained an enormous amount from my interaction with the other delegates to the workshop and the conference."

Birds are unique in having feathers. Ultimately, flight feathers represent the main means of locomotion for most species, and the process and strategy of replacing those feathers is a fascinating and important aspect of bird biology. The ADU is a world leader in the quantitative analysis of moult, because the "Underhill-Zucchini moult model" was developed here in 1987, and there has subsequently been a long history of moult research at the ADU. This new paper is collaboration of Adrian Craig and Bo Bonnievie at Rhodes University with Dieter Oschadleus, who heads up SAFRING at the ADU. The study species is the Southern Red Bishop, and the paper considers the variability in the timing and duration of primary moult across southern Africa.

Craig AJFK, Bonnevie B, Oschadleus HD 2010. Regional patterns in moult and sexual dimorphism of adult Southern Red Bishops Euplectes orix in southern Africa. Ostrich 81: 123–128.

ABSTRACT: Using the SAFRING database and the Underhill-Zucchini model of primary moult, we analysed the timing of wing moult in Southern Red Bishops Euplectes orix in relation to sex and geographical region. Birds from the winter rainfall region in the south-western sector of the Western Cape start the annual moult more than two months before any other population, but there were no significant differences in starting date within the summer rainfall region. There were striking differences in the estimates of moult duration (62–114 d), which did not follow a consistent pattern in relation to sex or geography; annual variation within a region may be an additional factor. Throughout southern Africa, both sexes showed a trend for longer-winged birds to take more time to complete their moult. We suggest that sex, geographical area and possible annual environmental variations may all influence the timing of moult in local populations. In this sexually dimorphic species, males are consistently longer-winged and heavier than females.

The pdf of the paper is available from Dieter Oschadleus.

In March this year a successful Ringer's conference was held at Barberspan. Graham Grieve has written a report from a ringer's / attendee's point of view and this may be read as an Afring News article.

Olive-tree Warblers are Palearctic migrants to the thornveld in northern parts of southern Africa. It is an elusive species, sometimes found by being caught in a mistnet rather than being observed. Darren Pietersen recorded this species by unexpectedly catching it in the Kalahari at a new locality for the species. Darren has written an article for Afring News.

Read Afring News articles here.

Photo: Olive-tree Warbler, D Pietersen 

Today, 23 June 2010, marks the tenth anniversary of the sinking of the Treasure. And sixteen years and three days ago, on 20 June 1994, the Apollo Sea sank. Both were bulk iron-ore carriers, and only had enough oil on board to enable them to reach their destinations in the east. But both managed to do a huge amount of penguin mischief with relatively small volumes of oil; a big oil tanker would have carried some 250 times as much oil as these vessels did.

The past 10 years have been some of the most dramatic in the unfolding saga of the African Penguin. At the time of the spills, the populations of the penguin were growing at quite a dramatic rate, almost 10%. If the spills could have been avoided the population increase would have been even larger. An oil spill not only kills penguins, it destroys the breeding attempts of penguins which have nests when oiled, it disrupts pair bonds, and the breeding performance of a substantial proportion of de-oiled penguins is impaired (but it is still definitely worth de-oiling them) – research at the ADU shows that a de-oiled penguin is not quite as good as new.

Since about 2004, penguin populations at colonies in South Africa have been decreasing, and decreasing at an alarming rate. The most likely reason is a shortage of food, probably in part due to competition with the commercial fishery for sardine and anchovy, and in probably in part due to the fact that the distribution of these fish has moved eastwards, past Cape Agulhas, so that there is currently no penguin colony with lots of fish nearby. So, last month, the IUCN status of the African Penguin was upgraded from "Vulnerable" to "Endangered".

Conservation measures need to be based on research, and the ADU has played its role in researching the African Penguin in the years since the Apollo Sea spill. A list of these papers and postgraduate projects can be downloaded here. Penguin research is expensive and if anyone would like to make a contribution to enable the ADU to maintain its conservation research intiatives for this species, please contact Les Underhill.

Lorenzo Serra completed a PhD on Grey Plovers in the ADU in 2002. His thesis was entitled "Cold winters vs. long journeys: adaptations of primary moult and body mass to migration and wintering in the Grey Plover Pluvialis squatarola." For his PhD research he did an analysis of the data collected by bird ringers in several strategically placed countries, and did, for example, a synthesis of the timing of moult in relation to distance between the breeding area and the non-breeding areas. All the chapters of his thesis were published as journal articles.

Lorenzo came to the ADU from Italy to do his PhD on the strength of a bursary, awarded by the Italian Council for Research (CNR). He returned to a post at INFS, now ISPRA, the Italian Institute for Environmental Research and Conservation in Bologna, which houses for example the Italian bird ringing scheme.

Since graduation, Lorenzo has maintained an interest in primary moult, and has recently had a paper published on the moult of the Rock Sparrow, a small passerine, which is an unusual species in that brood desertion occurs in both sexes, parental investment is highly variable and there is sexual conflict over parental care. The photograph of the Rock Sparrow was taken by Adriano De Faveri.

Serra L, Pirrello S, Licheri D, Griggio M, Pilastro A 2010. Sex-dependent response of primary moult to simulated time constraints in the Rock Sparrow Petronia petronia. Journal of Avian Biology 41: 327-335.

ABSTRACT: There is growing evidence that moult speed affects plumage quality. In many bird species, males and females differ in terms of breeding effort, survival expectation and the relationship between fitness and plumage quality. Consequently, differences in moult strategies between the sexes can be expected. The aim of this study was to assess whether, under simulated time constraints and with no parental investment in the previous breeding season, males and females differed in: a) timing and duration of primary moult, b) growth rates of individual primary feathers, and c) number of concurrently growing feathers. We investigated the effect of time constraints generated by a treatment consisting of two decreasing photoperiods (slow changing photoperiod, SCP2 min day1 and fast changing photoperiod, FCP 8 min day1) on the primary post-nuptial moult of captive Rock Sparrows Petronia petronia. Females started to moult on average 14 and 15 days later than males in both experimental groups. Primary moult duration was 10 (FCP) and 24 (SCP) days longer in males than in females, and, within sex, 34 (females) and 48 (males) days longer in SCP birds than in FCP ones. Females renewed a larger number of primaries simultaneously (5.7% in FCP and 12.8% in SCP) and had a higher total daily feather mass grown (9.9% in FCP and 22.4% in SCP), even though daily growth rates of individual primaries did not differ between sexes. As a result, males and females completed their primary moult at the same time within treatment. The observed differences in timing, duration and energy allocation for primary moult between the sexes probably have a genetic basis, as birds did not engage in reproduction during the preceding breeding season.

You can obtain a pdf of the paper from Lorenzo.

Soccer fever reached the ADU this week, and Sue Kuyper, Antje Steinfurth and Linda Tsipa donned their soccer tops. Sue and Linda are the glue that holds the ADU together, responsible for all the administration of all the staff and students. Antje is a postdoc, who still needs to get her own page on the ADU website! She is just back in office after several weeks of penguin fieldwork on Dassen Island. Between staff, students and research associates, nine of the 32 participating nations are represented in the ADU.

Birgit Erni, Res Altwegg and Greg Distiller are presenting papers at the International Statistical Ecology Conference 2010 at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, from 6–9 July. This conference "brings together experts from around the world to discuss topics of interest to ecological statisticians and numerical biologists. Sessions will be focused upon mark-recapture methods, distance sampling methods, other abundance estimation techniques, monitoring of biodiversity, survey design and analysis for estimating population trends, modelling of spatial trends in animal density, integrated population modelling, stochastic population dynamics modelling, stochastic multispecies modelling, and stochastic modelling of animal movement." In other words, it is about all the statistical things that the Animal Demography Unit aims to do. Res, Birgit and Greg are representing us there. The abstracts of the papers they will present can be found by clicking on the titles of the papers:

Comparing the relative effects of human subsidies and environmental variation on Cape Town's Peregrine population by Res Altwegg, Andrew Jenkins, Betty Madiba.

An analysis of the population dynamics of the Cape Gannet by Greg Distiller, Res Altwegg, Rob Crawford.

Moult data contain answers to ecological questions: Curlew Sandpipers shift start of moult according to breeding success by Birgit Erni, Yahkat Barshep, Les G Underhill, Clive DT Minton.

8 June was declarded as World Oceans Day by the United Nations, starting in 2009. So today, 8 June 2010 is the second World Oceans Day. How does one celebrate World Oceans Day? I was on Robben Island with Team 4 of 2010 of our Earthwatch Project. As our contribution to World Oceans Day we did a round island count of the shorebirds as part of the team's work programme. We excluded penguins, terns, gulls and cormorants – they breed on the island, so they get monitored by other projects. We counted 276 African Black Oystercatchers, 70 African Sacred Ibises, 31 Blacksmith Lapwings, 12 Egyptian Geese, 12 Little Egrets, 11 Whimbrels, 8 White-fronted Plovers and 2 South African Shelduck in the intertidal zone around the island, which is about 10 km in length. The count takes about four hours to do, and we always do it around high tide.

The number of African Black Oystercatchers on Robben Island increased steadily in the early 2000s, but has levelled off in recent years: there were averages of 179 in 2001/02, 214 in 2002/03, 221 in 2003/04 and 283 in 2004/05. (The earliest available count was 40 birds.) Today's count of 276 is typical of counts in the past few years. Three first-year birds were seen; oystercatcher chicks spend about 2–3 months with their parents before they leave "home". Most fledglings ought to have left by now, early winter. Oystercatchers on Robben Island are in pairs throughout the year; on Robben Island they guard their territories continuously. In fact most breeding pairs of African Black Oystercatchers are prisoners to their territories, and in the best parts of Robben Island these are only about 50 m long. Today at high tide there were two flocks totalling 40 birds – these are the "bachelors" (of both sexes) – the football term "hooligan" applies to these birds, because these young birds (three-plus years old) continually harass the breeding pairs for some sign of weakness so they can drive out a territorial bird and take over its space and its mate.

African Sacred Ibises have become regular foragers in the beds of washed up kelp on Robben Island. Egyptian Geese have adapted to grazing in the intertidal zone in the past couple of decades. South African Shelduck are a fairly unusual species on Robben Island, occurring on only eight of the 66 SABAP2 lists submitted for pentad 3345_1820 so far. The only overwintering migrant waders seen were Whimbrels; summer counts include a variety of migrant waders and terns.

Mariëtte Wheeler, who graduated with a PhD in December last year, is attending the APECS (Association for Early Polar Career Scientists) career development workshop and the International Polar Year conference in Oslo, Norway, this coming week. Her attendance is covered through generous sponsership by the Research Council of Norway and the South African National Antarctic Programme of the National Research Foundation. She is presenting a paper at each event. Mariëtte's PhD investigated the effects of human impact on the breeding seabirds and seals on Marion Island, in the southern Indian Ocean, and it is this research that she will be presenting. The two presentations are entitled Quantitative Evidence of Wildlife Responses to Human Activities and Evaluating Recommendations for the Management of Activities at Marion Island and The Effects of Research Activities and Pedestrian Approaches on the Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) at Sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Click on the title for the abstract.

The Bank Cormorant Phalacrocorax neglectus is endemic to the Benguela ecosystem, breeding at several sites along the coasts of Namibia and western South Africa. It has been classified as "Endangered" for many years, but as its scientific name suggests, it has rather been neglected for conservation research. The study reported here makes a contribution to this research, examining foraging behaviour at the largest colony of the species, where populations are increasing slowly. The lead author, Katta Ludynia, is an ADU postdoc. Mercury and Ichaboe Islands, near the northern limit of the species’ range, currently host 70–80% of the population. Numbers have declined dramatically at Ichaboe Island in the 1990s and do not show any sign of recovery whereas numbers at Mercury declined but have increased since the late 1990s and are currently stable. Since 1999 Mercury Island hosts the world’s largest breeding colony with c. 1800 breeding pairs during peak breeding. Changes in food availability are believed to be a main reason for changes in population numbers, but predation, disturbance and weather conditions also seem to be of importance. Overall, little is known about the biology of Bank Cormorants and more studies are needed in order to come up with effective protection measures.

Ludynia K, Jones R, Kemper J, Garthe S, Underhill LG 2010. Foraging behaviour of Bank Cormorants in Namibia: implications for conservation. Endangered Species Research 12: 31–40.

ABSTRACT: We studied the foraging and diving behaviour of male Bank Cormorants Phalacrocorax neglectus at Mercury Island, Namibia, during the 2007–2008 breeding season. The island hosts the world’s largest breeding colony of this endangered species. Population numbers are currently stable at Mercury Island, whereas numbers at other colonies in Namibia are decreasing, including those at formerly important colonies. This trend is presumably due to reduced food availability. At Mercury Island, bank cormorants foraged inshore (c 2 km off the coast) in close vicinity to their breeding site (c 3 km off the colony) and dived to an average depth of 30 m. Diet at Mercury Island was dominated by demersally occurring pelagic goby Sufflogobius bibarbatus. Our findings suggest that Bank Cormorants are benthic feeders along their entire range and that their foraging behaviour in Namibia does not differ from that suspected in South Africa. Further studies, extending to other breeding sites, are needed to explain the different population trends and how these may be influenced by food availability. The identification of important foraging sites will play a crucial role in the management of Namibia’s first Marine Protected Area and will contribute towards the protection of this species.

Because Endangered Species Research is an "open access" journal, you download the pdf of the paper from the journal website.

Congratulations to two of my students who graduated with PhDs yesterday. On the left is Dr Kutlwano Ramaboa, who is a Lecturer in the Department of Statistical Sciences at UCT. The title of Kutlwano's thesis is Contributions to linear regression diagnostics using the singular value decomposition: Measures to identify outlying observations, influential observations and collinearity in multivariate data. On the right is Dr Marta de Ponte, and the title of her thesis is Population dynamics of Great White Pelicans: causative factors and impact on other seabirds. Although the two topics are a long way apart, they both solve practical problems in their respective fields. The graduation programme contains a few paragraphs about each PhD student and the research project; you can download the entries for Kutlwano and Marta.

Steve Kirkman has coauthored a paper which documents the incident in which False Killer Whales were stranded at Kommetjie in May last year. This photograph of one of the animals involved was taken by Rob Tarr. Cetacean mass-stranding events are rare in southern Africa compared to places like Australia and New Zealand. This was the eighth mass stranding of this species to occur on the South African coast since 1928, a rate of about one every 10 years, with no indication that these events are on the increase.

Kirkman SP, Meÿer MA, Thornton M. 2010. False killer whale Pseudorca crassidens mass stranding at Long Beach on South Africa's Cape Peninsula, 2009. African Journal of Marine Science 32: 167–170.

ABSTRACT A mass stranding of False Killer Whales Pseudorca crassidens at Long Beach near the village of Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, in May 2009 is described. The estimated size of stranded group was 55 animals, which is close to the median size of P. crassidens groups that have stranded previously in South Africa (58). Five of the stranded individuals succumbed, 36 were euthanised and 14 were rescued. This was the eighth known mass stranding of this species to occur in South Africa, with all these events occurring on the irregular south-west coast of the Western Cape province.

Every issue of Africa – Birds & Birding has a page devoted to some aspect of the research of the Animal Demography Unit. With the focus on football over the next two months, we planned the report for the June-July issue with this in mind. We asked the question: "Which of the 31 visiting nations are represented in the SAFRING database?" The short answer to this question is contained in the title of this news item, and the longer answer is in the double page spread in the current issue of the magazine. We are grateful to Eve Gracie, editor of Africa – Birds & Birding for giving us permission to put this page on the website.

The factsheet for African Penguin on the BirdLife International website now officially classifies this species as "Endangered." The justification is given in two sentences: "This species has been uplisted to Endangered because recent data has revealed that it is undergoing a very rapid population decline, probably as a result of commercial fisheries and shifts in prey populations. This trend currently shows no sign of reversing, and immediate conservation action is required to prevent further declines."

The ADU, along with many other institutions, has been involved in a long series of research projects which have documented some of the problems facing the African Penguin. The more research we do, the scarier the problems seem to become. Unless and until we understand these issues, we can make little progress with implementation of targeted conservation actions that are really going to make a difference. The horrendously frustrating reality is that there are no obvious answers. From studies using GPS data loggers, we know that penguins must find food for their chicks within a diameter of about 20 km around their breeding colony. But the fish on which they feed are continuously on the move, so closing the areas around colonies to commercial fishing is not obviously going to make a difference. The crucial problem is that there is now a serious mismatch between the area where the fish are currently concentrating, mainly east of Cape Agulhas, and the locations of all the penguin breeding colonies. The shift in fish concentrations might be a consequence of climate change (and therefore be permanent) or it might be one of the "regime shifts" which occurs in the oceans, and reverse itself after a bunch of years, a scary decade or longer.

The two pictures were taken by a "camera trap" set up on Robben Island. They show the identical scene, by day and by night. Somehow, the bunch of penguins by day, and the single penguin by night, are symbolical of the plight of the African Penguin.

The Wader Study Group Bulletin is published by the International Wader Study Group (IWSG) three times a year. The latest issue of the bulletin has just been produced and it contains a particularly interesting set of papers. One of the papers has ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz as lead author. (The IWSG also holds an annual conference; this year the conference is in Lisbon, Portugal from 2–3 October and at least two members of the ADU plan to attend.)

The new paper deals with the primary moult of second-year Wood Sandpipers.
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Taylor PB 2010. The path to adult dress: primary moult in second-year Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. Wader Study Group Bulletin 117: 35–40.
The abstract is below. This paper is the third of a trilogy of papers dealing with the primary moult of the Wood Sandpiper. The other two papers dealt with the moult of adult and first-year Wood Sandpipers respectively. The citations to these papers are
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Gustowska A, Taylor PB 2009. Extended primary moult as an adaptation of adult Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola to their use of freshwater habitats of southern Africa. Ardea 97: 271–280.
and
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Taylor PB 2010. Rapid or slow moult? The choice of primary moult strategy by immature Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. Journal for Ornithology 151: 429–441.
The pdfs for all three papers are available from Magda.

ABSTRACT: The path to adult dress: primary moult in second-year Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. We know little about the primary moult of waders in their second year of life, especially migrants. Remisiewicz et al. (2009, 2010) have provided details on the primary moult of immature and adult Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa, but there is no information on the primary moult of second-year birds. Most Wood Sandpipers leave southern Africa for their northern breeding grounds when they are 10–11 months old, so migration separates the subsequent cycles in their primary moult. We chose this species to determine if the pattern of the first complete primary moult of waders during their second year of life differs from that of adults. We analysed the primary moult scores of 97 sub-adult (13- to 20-months-old) Wood Sandpipers obtained in southern Africa by using the Underhill–Zucchini moult model to estimate the timing and duration of moult for all 10 primaries combined and for P1 and P2 individually. Sub-adult Wood Sandpipers were observed in southern Africa between June and December, when, by about 19 months of age, they become indistinguishable from adults. Half of the sub-adults showed two generations of their fully grown primaries after a previous partial moult. All 54 sub-adults in active moult started at P1 and progressed outwards to P10. The starting date of moult for all sub-adults estimated using all 10 primaries was 2 September, 13 days later than for adults. The sub-adults’ primary moult was estimated to last on average 134 days, which did not differ significantly from the 131 days in adults. The rate primary feather mass is deposited did not differ between the sub-adults and the adults. Moult of P1 and P2 in sub-adults started 10–11 days later than in adults, but overlapped in the same manner as in adults. The number of primaries grown simultaneously with subsequently moulted primaries and the size of the wing gap in sub-adults resembled the pattern in adults. Sub-adults finished their primary moult on 15 January on average, 15 days later than adults. We suggest that sub-adult Wood Sandpipers catch up with the timing of the adults when they are 19–20 months old, when they finish their first complete moult of primaries, before the pre-migratory fattening period in February–March.

2010 is the United Nations' International Year of Biodiversity. Every year the world celebrates International Biodiversity Day on 22 May. Today is International Biodiversity Day within the International Year of Biodiversity. So what is expected of us today. Our goal is to raise awareness of the importance of preserving the diversity of life on earth – healthy ecosystems and the biodiversity that goes with them are important for a whole bunch of things: water provision, climate stabilization, pollination for agriculture, tourism, coastal protection, nutrition, provision of genetic resources, water purification and carbon sequestration. In a nutshell, healthy biodiversity enhances the quality of life.

The Animal Demography Unit – mostly through its citizen scientists – tries to answer three questions in relation to biodiversity. Where does it occur? How much of it is out there? How is it changing? Unless we measure, biodiversity slips away unnoticed. If we do measure it, we can take action to preserve it. The ADU projects – two bird atlases (SABAP1 and SABAP2), SAFRING, CAR, CWAC, BIRP, SABCA, SARCA – have all played their role in providing the information that has assisted in the conservation of biodiversity.

Today is the day when all the citizen scientists who participate in the projects of the ADU should be specially aware of their responsibilities to be ambassadors for biodiversity.

The next ADU Seminar is on Wednesday 26 May at 11h30. Our speaker is Sara Lipshutz, whose topic is "Estimating the population size and distribution of Kittlitz's Plovers at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary."

Sara is a semester-abroad student from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, USA, and she has spent the past six months at UCT within the programme called Globalization and the Environment. For her independent study project within this programme, Sara linked up with Magda Remisiewicz's wader ringing fieldwork at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary and conducted her own project on the Kittlitz's Plovers there, estimating the population size from the pattern of captures and recaptures.

The talk will be in the Map Room of the ADU, on the second floor of the PD Hahn Building.

This just a reminder to all CWACers that the winter counts will be coming up in July and with it being World Cup month please ensure that you count your sites timeously. Some sites (e.g. Langebaan Lagoon) may well get swamped with tourists during this period and may cause additional disturbance during normal count periods. If you suspect this to be the case at your site please move your count dates to just before or just after the World Cup period (11 June - 11 July).

A reminder that if you have not yet submitted your Summer 2010 counts to please get them in as soon as possible. Electronic forms can be emailed to Doug Harebottle, the interim CWAC coordinator, otherwise post your census forms to CWAC, Animal Demography Unit, Dept of Zoology, UCT, Rondebosch, 7701

Last weekend, 36 people gathered together to attend the 2010 Namibian ringers' get-together at Kakuse farm near Tsumeb. Dieter Oschadleus, head of SAFRING who travelled from Cape Town to attend the event, reports: "Nearly 300 birds were ringed with Blue Waxbills and Red-billed Quelea being the most often caught species. Some fantastic species diversity was provided by the efforts of Dirk Heinrich and others, who ringed Three-banded Courser, Comb Duck, African Golden Oriole, Dark Chanting Goshawk, Gabar Goshawk, White-crowned Shrike, White-browed Scrub Robin, Yellow-billed Hornbill and Red-billed Hornbill. Not all ringers came to ring birds, however; some attended simply to enjoy the wonderful social atmosphere at these get-togethers.

"The hosts Ulrich and Anke Hofmann provided wonderful hospitality and meals. Gudrun Middendorf and Neil Thomson organised a memorable event!" Well done to the Namibian ringers for arranging an event like this annually, and for supporting it by travelling large distances to attend.

After her joint presentations with Arnold van der Westhuizen at the De Aar Workshop a couple of week ends ago, Donella Young, coordinator of the ADU's CAR project, travelled on eastwards. On Friday evening, 14 May, she met with CAR participants in Barkly East: "I was delighted to be able to give these people direct feedback about the results of the many hours spent counting big birds twice a year over the last 12 years since 'precinct' Northeastern Eastern Cape (EE) was established. A big thank you to Kevin and Lesley Meise, who warmly welcomed all of us into their home with tea/coffee and delicious snacks. Kevin has organized the counts of EE routes in this area for 12 years. It makes such a difference to me to be able to meet the people whose names I know so well from CAR roadcount forms. Now when I email or phone I will know whom I am talking to! Helen Lechmere-Oertel and Jacky Steyler Lamer came all the way from Maclear and Ugie; they will organize the EE routes in the Maclear/Ugie/Elliot area now that Tanya Smith, of the EWT Crane Conservation Programme, has moved. Helen and Jacky are regular participants and I learnt that Jacky, who teaches in Ugie, always takes two High School pupils with her on her route and she finds there is never a shortage of potential assistants. Mike and Alida Agenbag and their three children all attended – they always count their route together and really enjoy the outing. I was also glad to meet Jenni Brown, who has counted route EE12 faithfully for the last twelve years and I don't think she has missed a count!"

Sonja Krüger is the Regional Ecologist for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife in the West uKhahlamba area: "Helen had phoned me to ask if Sonja, who was doing some Bearded Vulture field work in the area, could also participate. So she also gave a presentation and it was fascinating to see how large the home ranges of these special threatened birds are.

"During my presentation I also showed a draft SABAP2 distribution map of the Blue Korhaan, a CAR species, to encourage people to consider filling some of the big gaps in the SABAP2 project in their area. This seemed to spark much interest and I hope that the next birding event in Barkly East will be Arnold van der Westhuizen presenting a SABAP2 workshop."

Barkly East is one of the towns that has been visited by substantial numbers of African Openbills this past summer. "They have caused quite a stir by walking along the grassy verges of the Barkly East streets apparently feasting on garden snails." The picture was taken by Lesley Meise.

Dr Nola Parsons, vet at SANCCOB and ADU PhD graduate, led Team 3 of 2010 doing fieldwork on Robben Island. She was assisted by ADU postdoc Katta Ludynia and Shannon Hampton, who did an MSc on penguins a couple of years ago, and is now a Zoology PhD student. It was another full team of four volunteers. Nola reports: "We had a good two weeks unhampered by any tourists or buses because the tourist ferry to Robben Island only ran on one day due to storms and rough seas for the rest of the time! However, we completed almost the entire work schedule, doing our fieldwork in-between the rain and sometimes in the rain!

"Two full nest rounds were completed. There are currently a total of 178 active nests. We recorded 70 retraps so Team 2 retains their record! The weather was the limiting factor. We did one moult count, with a total of eight penguins moulters. We measured 94 chicks for condition values and we think we set a record for measuring the heaviest chick! This weighed 3.45 kg and had a sibling of over 3 kg! We completed two game counts, two rabbit counts (with the largest number of rabbits counted so far this winter), two beach clean-ups, and sadly added another two cat sightings to the list. We saw the Eland briefly while doing nest round and saw the last remaining Ostrich several times.

"We sent seven penguins to SANCCOB of which two were oiled, four were abandoned chicks and one was an arrested moulter. The most exciting of these removals was the helicopter ride for four of the penguins! The helicopter was bringing another group to the island because the ferry was not running. We released three penguins from SANCCOB. A massive number of Swift Terns are breeding in the village. The birder on our team decided that the Malachite Sunbird was his best non-penguin sighting!"

"Team 3 of 2010 was an excellent team willing to work in all weather conditions and enjoy a glass of wine with dinner and pudding each night."

Here are the details of this Earthwatch project, called South African Penguins.

Every year, the bird ringers in Namibia organize a Ringers' Get-Together for themselves. This year's Ringers' Get-Together is taking place on Farm Kakuse, north of Tsumeb from 13–16 May. The accommodation is the Toko camping site. Camping is under the huge Acacia trees in the picture. This year, Dieter Oschadleus, head of SAFRING, is attending. Dieter says: "I'm looking forward to meeting with the Namibian ringers again. My last visit was in May 2004 when the get-together was held at Wiese farm. I'm hoping that the catch at Kakuse includes Chestnut Weavers and White-crowned Shrikes." We look forward to Dieter's report on his return!

The Lepidopterists' Society of Africa (LepSoc) is our partner in SABCA, the butterfly atlas. LepSoc is hosting a butterfly awareness day for the public in September. This event will form part of the society's annual conference which takes place at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens in Johannesburg over the weekend of 24–26 September 2010. The conference is open to anyone interested in butterflies, and there will be talks of both scientific nature as well as more informal ones on the Friday and the Saturday. Sunday 26 September is the public day, where anyone that wants to find out more about butterflies can come and learn! Details of the conference and the public day are on the LepSoc website.

Silvia Mecenero is in charge of SABCA, the butterfly atlas. She reports: "SABCA continues to make strides towards completion. Of the estimated 450 000 specimens of butterflies in collections, electronic records have been created for 365 000 of these. A complex checking process follows, and currently 161 000 records have made their way into the final database. More data is to be uploaded soon and we hope to have a final total of about 300 000 fully georeferenced records.

"A total of about 12 600 photographs of butterflies are in the project's Virtual Museum. Each record in the VM represents a record of a species at a locality on a date. The species with the most photographs in the Virtual Museum is the Common Zebra Blue Leptotes pirithous pirithous with 374 records; the photograph is of this species. These records, even of abundant species, help enormously in compiling maps of the distribution of a species – unlike most of the specimen records, they are up to date observations. This is the route by which citizen scientists get involved in SABCA. The project website provides all the details of how to participate in the SABCA virtual museum.

"South Africa's first Butterfly Cenusus Weekend took place the end of April. Fun was had by all who participated! Data will be evaluated shortly and there may be plans to have a spring BCW later this year – keep an eye on the SABCA website for details."

SABCA is a partnership between SANBI, LepSoc and the ADU.

The Cape Leopard Trust has recently started a Boland Project with the appointment of Anita Meyer and Jeannie Hayward.

Anita and Jeannie have been setting out "camera traps" in the mountains of the Boland. They already have three leopard pictures: "We're thrilled to share one of the first leopard pictures from the pilot survey of Cape Leopard Trust's Boland Project in the Limietberg! Even though the first camera we checked presented us with only images of hikers walking by, it was with lots of anticipation that we downloaded the next batch of cards we collected. We were ecstatic when we saw this picture. It looks like a big, healthy male, photographed on a trail above the Bains Kloof pass. With such a clear shot of the flank at a right angle, it makes for an ideal identikit photo." It is quite hard to believe that a picture of this quality is taken automatically by a camera tucked away out of site with only an infra-red sensor to tell it when to click the shutter!

Read the full story on the Cape Leopard Trust website. They let an important cat out of the bag.

This is the fourth of the series on new postgraduate students in the ADU in 2010.

Alison Towner's MSc project aims to understand the influence of environmental paramaters on the fine scale movements of Great White Sharks Carcharodon carcharias in Gansbaai in the Western Cape. Alison's project will be co-supervised by Malcolm Smale, a shark researcher at Bayworld, Port Elizabeth Museum, and myself.

Alison completed an honours degree in Marine Biology at the University of North Wales in Bangor in 2006. After graduation she worked as a scuba diving instructor in the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea. She then she has pursued her passion for sharks by coming to South Africa to work as a marine guide/researcher for Marine Dynamics, one of the shark cage diving companies in Gansbaai, South Africa. Alison has been working to collate a database of dorsal fin and underwater body patterns to aid in the identification individual, to help assess the population dynamics of the Great White Sharks moving through Gansbaai. During February 2010, right at the outset of her MSc project Alison attended the International White Shark Symposium held in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she had a chance to network with other Great White Shark researchers from all corners of the globe.

Alison's research is sponsored by the Dyer Island Conservation Trust. Alison will keep us up todate on her activities by maintaining a research blog.

In June 2008, Dieter Oschadleus was part of a group that travelled to the town of Lubango in Angola. They started the process of turning the 40 000 specimens in the Lubango Bird Skin Collection into records in an electronic database. The report of this visit is contained in a newly published paper:

Mills, M.S.L., Franke, U., Joseph, G., Miato, F., Milton, S., Monadjem, A., Oschadleus, D. and Dean, W.R.J. 2010. Cataloguing the Lubango Bird Skin Collection: towards an atlas of Angolan bird distributions. Bulletin of the African Bird Club 17: 43–53.

We asked Dieter, who has a particular interest in weavers, what had been for him the highlight of the trip: "It was exciting to see two specimens of Black-chinned Weaver Ploceus nigrimentus, a rare weaver found mainly in Angola and slightly to the north of Angola. In the picture, the female at the top has a black head, the male's crown is yellow-orange."

The African Bird Club, the publisher of the Bulletin, was formed in 1992 by a group of people with a common interest in African ornithology. The aims of the Club are to
1. provide a worldwide focus for African ornithology
2. raise money to support conservation projects in Africa through the Conservation Fund
3. encourage an interest in the conservation of the birds of the region
4. liaise with and promote the work of existing regional societies
5. publish a twice-yearly colour bulletin
6. encourage observers to visit lesser known areas of the region, and search for and study globally threatened and near-threatened species.

This is the third in the series on new postgraduate students in the ADU in 2010.

Esther Mostert's MSc project will involve the development of bird monitoring systems for the South African National Parks. Her project will be supervised by Professor Melodie McGeoch, who heads up the Cape Research Centre of SANParks and myself. Her MSc studies are funded by SANParks.

Esther completed her undergraduate and honours degree in Zoology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, her home province – she grew up in East London. One of her honours projects looked at the use of vocal mimicry in the Common Fiscal Lanius collaris on the Rhodes University campus. She enjoys being outdoors, and is currently honing her rock-climbing skills.

For her MSc, Esther will consider various possibilities for monitoring birds in the national parks. One of the options is to make extensive use the SABAP2 protocol – so we would like all atlasers to make lots of SABAP2 checklists in the pentads of the national parks.

This news item is part of the ADU's celebration of World Migratory Bird Day, this weekend 8–9 May.

Post doc Magda Remisiewicz has made numerous expeditions from Cape Town to the Barberspan Bird Sanctuary for her fieldwork over the past three years: "We have just returned from our last trip to Barberspan this spring-summer season and achieved this expedition's main goal of ringing and examining Little Stints to check their fat deposits and the development of their breeding plumage just before they depart on migration to the northern breeding grounds in the Siberian tundra.

"The Little Stints we caught were nearly double their usual body mass, weighing 40g–42g. I have never seen birds so tightly packed with fat. The fat deposit under the Little Stint’s thin skin formed a massive cushion extending over the underparts from the furculum, over the pectoral muscles and the belly to the base of the hind limbs. Once these birds took off, they should certainly have made it to Kenya or further in one flight. The Little Stints had put on almost complete breeding plumage, with soft white edges to their chestnut-and-black body feathers. You rarely see them that white, because these edges wear away by the time the Little Stints reach the breeding grounds and they look much darker, the cryptic design they need in the tundra where they will be breeding in about six weeks' time.

"Barberspan was Kittlitz's Plover heaven as usual. We saw eggs and chicks as well as flocks of immatures a few months old feeding alongside adults on the swarms of minute biting flies, which were in turn feeding on us. Many recaptures of Kittzlitz's Plovers and of other waders ringed during the SAFRING Ringers' Conference in March provided excellent data. The surprise was a catch of about 30 Crowned Lapwings mist-netted at full moon. During the past six months we have followed the seasonal changes in bird numbers and species composition. At any time of the year Barberspan Bird Sanctuary is a fantastic ringing and birding site. The winter visitors such as Swallow-tailed Bee-eater and Crimson-breasted Shrike are now arriving in numbers."

We continue our series of new postgraduate students in the ADU in 2010.

Arnold van der Westhuizen is registered for a PhD with the Department of Historical Studies at UCT. His supervisor there will be Professor Lance van Sittert, and I will cosupervise. Lance is an environmental historian – he is playing a major role in helping us understand the trajectory along which we arrived at the biodiversity of the present by "mining" the biodiversity information preserved in the rich archives of the Cape Colony and then the Cape Province, spanning the period roughly 1850–1950. Arnold's research project will tackle a shorter historical time frame, and focus on the history of the ADU and how biodiversity atlasing started from the first bird atlas projects in South Africa (eg SABAP1), and evolved into the current variety of projects within the ADU. One of the key features of the ADU is the role which citizen scientists play in the unit, and Arnold will evaluate the importance of this to the success of the ADU.

Arnold's formative years were in Moorreesburg in the Western Cape, and it was here that his interest in nature conservation in general and birds in particular were kindled. He has recently qualified as a bird ringer, he participates in CAR, and has submitted 475 checklists to SABAP2 so far, and has contributed checklists in every month since August 2007, right near the start of SABAP2. He is responsible for the extremely valuable cluster of well-atlased pentads along the border of the Free State and Eastern Cape, centred on Aliwal North. He maintains a birding blog, www.aliwalbirdblog.blogspot.com.

The web pages of the ADU's new postgraduate students are steadily appearing.

First onto the website is David Maphisa. David is starting a PhD supervised by Res Altwegg at SANBI and myself. Res is an Honorary Research Associate of the ADU. David is based at Eskom Ingula Pumped Storige Scheme currently under construction on the border between the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, near Van Reenen. He is employed by BirdLife South Africa on the Ingula Partnership – a partnership between ESKOM, BirdLife South Africa and the Middelpunt Wetland Trust. He has an MSc in Conservation Biology from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology. He is a regular contributor of checklists to SABAP2.

The formal title of his PhD project is Adaptive management of high altitude grasslands: Ingula as a case study. David comments: "My PhD work revolves around 'learning by doing', through the process of adaptive management. A number of rare and threatened biota occur at Ingula, sometimes with conflicting management options. In short, my PhD project seeks to develop a monitoring protocol and adaptive management programme that can be used to manage the Ingula property and similar habitat elsewhere. My research interests revolve around the biology of rarity within the grassland biome, and in particular within moist Highveld grassland, and how to combat local extinctions of species within this area." The photograph shows David and Res driving around the study site at Ingula. We look forward to hearing reports of this project from time to time.

Silvia Mecenero, who coordinates SABCA, the butterfly conservation assessment project, reports: "South Africa's very first Butterfly Census Weekend (BCW) took place this past weekend. About 80 teams registered for this exciting event! Thank you to those of you who participated!! Teams have begun to submit their data - it seems that everyone had a great time. If any teams have fun census photos to share, please send us your best one for possible inclusion in the next SABCA newsletter. Please submit your data by 9 May. Even if you saw few of no butterflies, please still submit your data as this will help us to evaluate this BCW, so as to improve future BCWs. Here is the Data Submission Form.

Preliminary results will be made available on the SABCA website once data has been received.

Post-doc Magda Remisiewicz is back at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary for a fortnight of fieldwork, accompanied by Joel Avni and semester-abroad student from the US, Sara Lipshutz. "Our main aim this expedition is to catch Little Stints to assess their fat load and the extent of their breeding plumage just before they leave South Africa to head north. But most migrant waders have already departed, and the closest we have come to Little Stints is seeing them through binoculars, noting that they are tantalisingly fat and in almost full breeding plumage. Only single Wood Sandpipers, Greenshanks and Common Ringed Plovers remain. There are far fewer Caspian Terns than at the time of the Ringers' Conference last month, but we are seeing many more Whiskered Terns.

"We are catching many Kittlitz’s Plovers that were ringed during the conference and also our earlier expeditions, and these provide excellent data for Sara’s project to estimate the size of the population at Barberspan using capture-recapture analyses. We have also ringed a few unusual birds: a White-fronted Plover of the subspecies Charadrius marginatus tenellus and a Cape Shoveler (total head length, 125.6 mm), a rare catch though they are common here. A pair of Marsh Owls screams over our heads while we check the nets. We are also spotting species that are rarely seen here in summer, such as Swallow-tailed Bee-eater, Fulvous Duck, Crimson-breasted Shrike and Red-headed Finch.

"The rangers here, Andrew Mvundle, Amos Koloti and David Moruatheko, are still talking about all the friendship they got from the interesting folks they met at the SAFRING Ringers' Conference and are approaching atlasing with new-found purpose. They have asked me to convey their greetings to everyone they met at Barberspan."

In partnership with the Earthwatch Institute, researchers from the Animal Demography Unit at UCT, Marine and Coastal Management, Robben Island Museum and the University of Bristol coordinate an Earthwatch African Penguins Project on Robben Island. The project started in 2001 and has deployed six or seven teams of Earthwatch volunteers on the island each year. The project has collected an enormously valuable long-term database on many aspects of penguin breeding biology, with a particular focus on breeding success. April saw Team 2 of 2010 working on Robben Island. Peter Barham a Professor of Physics from the University of Bristol and an honorary research fellow at the ADU, lead the second team with his partner Barbara. They report on their progress: "Team two for 2010 was a full team of four volunteers, two from the USA, and two from Australia including the youngest volunteer to work on the project so far – this was his sixteenth birthday present form his grandmother who accompanied him; what a wonderful present to give a grandchild.

"Following the heat suffered by the first team, we were relieved to see cooler weather and found increasing numbers of birds starting to nest; with only a few of the nests set up by the first team having been abandoned during the two weeks between the teams. The number of African penguins is at an all time low so nests are still difficult to find on the island, but nevertheless the team managed to find more than 100 new nests where eggs had been laid to add to the study group – this puts the total of active nests in the study area at a similar level to last year, so we are hopeful that there has not been another major decrease in the population on Robben Island again this year. When we carried out a nest count of the area that Earthwatch teams regularly census, we found a similar number of active nests to that at the same time last year which helps reinforce the view that the Robben Island population seems stable so far this year."

The team also conducted two counts of moulting penguins, a beach clean-up, two rabbit counts, two counts of the antelope populations and measured almost 100 penguin chicks for growth and condition data. Peter commented: "The condition of most of these chicks, which is determined by comparing the length of their heads with their weight seemed very good, better than last year. With the feral cat population having been reduced again, Swift Terns have chosen to breed in the village on the island in large numbers this year." The team came off the island on Friday 16 April to the news that some may not get home as quickly as they expected due to the Icelandic volcano.

Andrew and Ivan Pickles have been ringing Barn Swallows monthly at Mt Moreland during summer for the last few years. Find out more about these swallows and the airport by watching Carte Blanche on Sunday 25 April. Andrew sent the following details:

"Last month Carte Blanche visited the new King Shaka Airport near Umdhloti just north of Durban. They filmed an insert on the airport on the Thursday, and stayed for the Friday and joined our ringing session. During the day they interviewed Angie Wilkin, Ted Vickers and Hilary Vickers then on the Friday afternoon they attended my presentation talk which was not filmed. Then they joined us for the ringing where I was interviewed. Initially the insert was to be 5 minutes long and shown after the airport insert, due to the footage obtained it has been extended into a full insert and is scheduled to be shown this coming Sunday 25th April. They say that a return visit is to be made next swallow season to see if any changes have happened due to the airport."

Note: the screening may be delayed by 1 or 2 weeks, so keep watching Carte Blanche.

Data from the SAFRING database are used in all sorts of ways to test all sorts of ideas. Here is a paper that combines the small samples of moult data collected by each ringer into a large enough dataset that inferences can be drawn. The picture (by Richard Sherley) is a Malachite Sunbird in eclipse plumage, one of the sexually dimorphic species considered in the paper.

Bonnievie B, Oschadleus HD. 2010. Timing of primary wing moult in sexually dimorphic passerines from the Western Cape, South Africa. Ostrich 81: 63–67.

Abstract: SAFRING ringing data was used to investigate the differences in the timing and duration of primary wing moult between males and females of sexually dimorphic passerines from the Western Cape, South Africa. In the sunbirds, weavers and canaries that were considered, the males generally started moult before the females, whereas this was not so for other species. In the species where males started moult before the females, the standard deviation of the start of moult was generally smaller in the males and the males generally took longer to moult. These differences in the patterns of moult are discussed in the context of differences in parental care between males and females of each species and within their taxonomic groups.

The pdf is available from Dieter Oschadleus.

In the 1990s, Roy Earlé at the National Museum in Bloemfontein developed a research interest in blood parasites of birds. These infections are potentially of conservation importance because they can weaken and kill birds. They are spread mainly by insects, especially flies and mosquitos. In an era of climate change, getting baseline data on infection prevalance is of paramount importance. Roy got SAFRING birdringers collecting blood smears, and my father George Underhill collected vast numbers of these. For his MSc, Albert Schultz did an analysis of the blood parasite data derived from these blood smears, and this paper is based on one of the chapters of his MSc thesis.

Schultz A, Underhill LG, Earlé RA, Underhill G 2010. Infection prevalence and absence of positive correlation between avian haemosporidian parasites, mass and body condition in the Cape Weaver Ploceus capensis. Ostrich 81: 69–76.

ABSTRACT: Over a two-year period, 945 adult Cape Weavers Ploceus capensis were mist-netted with a bias towards 632 male and 308 female birds. Blood smears presented avian haemosporidia in 58.79% of males and 61.90% of females, representing five species from three genera: one avian kinetoplastid haemoflagellate Trypanosoma everetti with 0.28% infection rate, Haemoproteus queleae (69.45%), Leucocytozoon bouffardi (23.91%), and Plasmodium species (5.76%). Double infections occurred in 40 birds (11.52%), with females having the greatest number. Differences in infection prevalence between sexes was correlated to time spent being active at the nest, with a marked reduction in female infection due to incubation within a tunnel-shaped nest providing protection from vectors. Commencement of the breeding season coincided with increased parasite prevalence in both sexes, correlating to energy expenditure on reproductive effort, resulting in reduced immunocompetence. Recorded seasonal spring relapse is synchronised with peak breeding season activity, when vector intensity and activity peak due to host population increases, and avian immunodefence systems are possibly compromised due to the stress of the reproductive cycle. No negative impacts were discerned on body mass or condition during this long-term study, which may be presented when parasitemia peaks over a number of days only, thereafter decreasing in intensity.

You can get a copy of the pdf from Albert Schultz.

Tomorrow, Wednesday 7 April, Andrew Baxter from the Cape Leopard Trust will be speaking on the research done by the CLT in the mountains of Western Cape. The venue is Lecture Theatre 3 of the Kramer Building, and the time is 18h00–19h30.

ABSTRACT: Enigmatic and elusive, wild leopards still roam free in the mountains of the Western Cape. Sightings are rare and leopard ecology in this region has been largely misunderstood. Can you imagine how many of these apex predators are left? How do they survive and what does the future hold for these amazing cats? Dr Andrew Baxter will do an illustrated presentation on the work of the CLT. Come and grab the cat by the tail; see incredible pictures of leopards captured on camera traps (like the one shown here) and find out how you can get involved as a volunteer in the Boland Project of the CLT.

The Kramer Building is part of UCT's Middle Campus, the large building just below De Waal Drive (M3).

The next ADU Seminar takes place on Friday 9 April at 12h00 in Map Room in the ADU, Second Floor, PD Hahn Building, Upper Campus, UCT. All welcome.

Our speaker is Ruben Fijn from The Netherlands. He works for the Sector of Bird Ecology, Bureau Waardenburg Ltd, Consultants for Environment and Ecology. Ruben's talk is entitled: Birds and windturbines: consequences for birds and policy makers.

Ruben spent a month or so in the Animal Demography Unit a few years ago, while working on his MSc thesis on the Important Bird Area Programme for Antarctica. Ruben has recently been doing projects on effects of offshore windfarms on seabirds, and his talk will present his experiences from this research.

The top picture shows a few of the windturbines in the North Sea that will be discussed in the talk, and the bottom picture shows windturbines near the coast of the IJsselmeer at Gaast in the Netherlands, with Barnacle Geese flying past uncomfortably close.

Last week, Sally Hofmeyr attended the second Graduate Student Network Indibano of the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON). The Indibano (which means gathering) was held in Port Elizabeth, timed to coincide with the launch of the SAEON Elwandle Node, based in Grahamstown and deals with coastal-inshore systems. The event was more-or-less single-handedly, and extremely capably, organised by former ADUer Shannon Hampton.

There were 16 participants, and each students presented those aspects of their research which involve long-term environmental monitoring. Sally's own presentation was on the use of CAR and SABAP data to identify a serious decline in the population of the Southern Black Korhaan, which is part of her PhD study. She said: "The range of different projects and systems being studied, even among such a small group, was incredible." Bernadette Snow, a consultant in scientific presentation technique, gave the students feedback on their presentations and a lot of very helpful guidance on how to improve this skill – an essential one for all scientists. Dr du Preez (NMMU) provided a day of valuable instruction in GIS. Victoria Goodall, Data Manager for SAEON's Fynbos Node, spoke about data management and how to work with SAEON, which promises to become an invaluable resource to all South African biologists in the near future. The launch of the new SAEON node took place at the Algoa Bay Yacht Club on the final evening. Sally's summary: "A good week was had by all, much useful information was shared, and most importantly, new connections and acquaintances were formed, further strengthening the growing network of scientists studying long-term environmental change throughout South Africa."

Throughout the world, ringing plays a key role in discovering the migration strategies of birds. This paper describes the patterns of migration for Common Snipe on their way southwards through Poland after the breeding season. ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz is a co-author of this paper.

Minias P, Wlodarczyk R, Meissner W, Remisiewicz M, Kaczmarek K, Czapulak A, Chylarecki P, Wojciechowski A, Janiszewski T 2010. The migration system of Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago on autumn passage through Central Europe. Ardea 98: 13–19.

ABSTRACT: The Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago migrates in large numbers through central Europe towards its wintering grounds in western Europe. Over the past 20 years more than 12 000 Common Snipes were ringed at seven ringing stations in Poland during their autumn migration. Birds migrating along the Baltic coast tended to spend the winter in more northern areas than those that used southern Poland as stopover sites during migration. This pattern supports the hypothesis of a parallel autumn migration exhibited by Common Snipe. Additionally, snipes passing through Poland at the beginning of the autumn migration (originating from near breeding areas) overwintered further north than later migrants (known to originate from more northern areas), which is consistent with a leap-frog migration pattern. Our results suggest that the migration pattern of the Common Snipe is more complex than previously thought, because these birds use a combination of two different non-exclusive migratory patterns.

If you would like a copy of the pdf, please email Magda.

Mt Moreland now has a web site for their Barn Swallows! There is a video clip of large numbers arriving at the roost site, and various news items and updates.

This paper presents a new paradigm for monitoring individual penguins. The method depends on the fact that the spot patterns on the chests of African Penguins are unique, analogous to fingerprints in humans. The research lies at the interface between Computer Science and Biology. Two authors have links to the ADU: Richard Sherley is a visiting PhD student in the ADU registered at the University of Bristol, and Professor Peter Barham, also of the University of Bristol, is an Honorary Research Associate.

Sherley RB, Burghardt T, Barham PJ, Campbell N, Cuthill IC 2010. Spotting the difference: towards fully-automated population monitoring of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus. Endangered Species Research 11: 101–111.

ABSTRACT: Placing external monitoring devices onto seabirds can have deleterious effects on welfare and performance, and even the most benign marking and identification methods return sparse population data at a huge time and effort cost. Consequently, there is growing interest in methods that minimise disturbance but still allow robust population monitoring. We have developed a computer vision system that automatically creates a unique biometric identifier for individual adult African Penguins Spheniscus demersus using natural markings in the chest plumage and matches this against a population database. We tested this non-invasive system in the field at Robben Island, South Africa. False individual identifications of detected penguins occurred in less than 1 in 10 000 comparisons (n = 73 600, genuine acceptance rate = 96.7%) to known individuals. The monitoring capacity in the field was estimated to be above 13% of the birds that passed a camera (n = 1453). A significant increase in this lower bound was recorded under favourable conditions. We conclude that the system is suitable for population monitoring of this species: the demonstrated sensitivity is comparable to computer-aided animal biometric monitoring systems in the literature. A full deployment of the system would identify more penguins than is possible with a complete exploitation of the current levels of flipper banding at Robben Island. Our study illustrates the potential of fully-automated, non-invasive, complete population monitoring of wild animals.

The journal in which the paper is published, Endangered Species Research, is open access, so the pdf of the paper can be downloaded here.

In partnership with the Earthwatch Institute, researchers from the Animal Demography Unit at UCT, Marine and Coastal Management, Robben Island Museum and the University of Bristol lead an Earthwatch African Penguins Project on Robben Island. The project started in 2001 and has deployed six or seven teams of Earthwatch volunteers on the island each year. The project has collected an enormously valuable long-term database on many aspects of penguin breeding biology, with a particular focus on breeding success. March sees the start of the project each year, with a team staying on Robben Island for two weeks each month.

Richard Sherley, visiting PhD student from the University of Bristol, has been leading the first team and reports on their progress: "Team One for 2010 was a full team of four volunteers, two from the USA, one from the UK and one from Egypt. This last volunteer, a German consulate employee from Cairo, is on the team for the second time. Having enjoyed her time on Team Seven last September so much that she has opted to return to find out what things are like for penguins at the other end of the Earthwatch season

"The answer to that question this year is hot and quiet. With African Penguin numbers already at an all time low and the recent run of hot weather in the Western Cape, finding nests to monitor was not easy. The volunteers and the penguins have really experienced a wide variety of Cape Town weather the past two weeks, but the recent heat wave that taken its toll. We were seeing a lot of broken egg shells on our trips around the colony and a few abandoned eggs that have survived the Kelp Gulls and the Mole Snakes. We have found 78 study so far, including those that we marked last year and have revisited to see if they are occupied. It is still early in the breeding season and hopefully things will improve in the next few months."

The team also conducted two counts of moulting penguins, two beach clean-ups, two rabbit counts, two counts of the antelope populations, a count of the island's wader population and measured some penguin chicks for growth and condition data: "Penguin chicks are usually sparse at Robben Island this early in the breeding season and we struggled to find many with this team. At least the other bird populations seem to be healthy – we counted around 330 oystercatchers and, with the cat population having been reduced again, the swift terns have chosen to breed in the village in large numbers this year." The team came off the island on 19 March.

The Secretariats of the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) are pleased to announce the countdown for World Migratory Bird Day 2010. This two-day awareness raising campaign will take place globally for the fifth consecutive year from 8–9 May 2010.

World Migratory Bird Day aims to inspire people to take action for the conservation of migratory birds and encourages national authorities, non-governmental organizations, clubs and societies, universities, schools and individuals around the world to organize events and programmes, which help draw attention to migratory birds around a central theme each year.

This year's theme is "Save migratory birds in crisis – every species counts!" It is closely linked to the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) declared by the United Nations for 2010.

SABAP2 makes a valuable contribution to the conservation of migrants, by generating important information about their distributions. South Africa lies at the southern end of the migration flyways of the long-distance migrants from Eurasia, and the predictions are that the effects of global change will be observed here first – if numbers of migrants decrease, then smaller populations can be accommodated farther north in Africa. Currently, the mini-project within SABAP2 called PHEAT – Please Help Establish Autumn Timing is gathering precise data on the timing of the northward departure of migrants in this year, 2010.

The fifth meeting of the Steering Committee of the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment (SABCA) took place in Pretoria today. All ten members of the Steering Committee were present. SABCA started in April 2007, and is due to end in March 2011, so this four-year project is on its last lap and working towards the production of its final deliverables. Silvia Mecenero, project coordinator for SABCA at the ADU, reported that 365 000 butterfly specimens have been digitized.

Discussion focused on the production of the final conservation assessment. There are about 650 species of butterflies in the atlas region, of which some 70 species are expected to be in threat categories. This coming weekend the 14 text authors are having a workshop, where they will learn how to do the assessments, use the sotfware and make a serious start on building momentum towards writing the species accounts.

Silvia will be presenting a talk at the University of Pretoria tomorrow – Department of Zoology and Entomology at 13h00 – SABCA: the Final Flight

Post doc Katta Ludynia is currently in Namibia continuing her research into foraging strategies of African Penguins. The research involves deploying, for a single feeding trip only, a small streamlined device that contains a miniaturized GPS unit, a battery and a memory card to store the data. The device is attached with tape, so it can be removed without damaging the feathers. Once the logger has been removed, it can be connected to a computer, and the precious information containing the positions of the penguin at one-minute intervals can be downloaded.

Katta reports: "We have so far successfully deployed eight African Penguins at Halifax Island with GPS data loggers and have received some interesting trips. Combined with data from previous seasons, we are getting a nice overview of where birds from Halifax Island feed. Unfortunatly, we had to interrupt our logger work due to a heat wave which caused quite a lot of nest desertions, chicks being left alone during the day and also some chick mortalities.

On Tuesday, I will be heading off to Mercury Island and do some more logger work there with Rian Jones from the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources. We have deployed GPS loggers on penguins at Mercury Island for several years in a row and birds have consistently foraged in an area north-west of the island. So I am curious to see if the birds stick to their known pattern or if they have a surprise for us this year.

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.

On the days between the Ringers' Conference in Barberspan and the BLSA AGM in Wakkerstroom, ADU staff and students will be doing several presentations:

• Tuesday, 16 March – BirdLife Vaaldam, Deneysville Aquatic Club, Deneysville: Dieter Oschadleus – "Unmasking the South Masked Weaver"
• Tuesday, 16 March – BirdLife Inkwazi Bird Club, Bryanston Country Club, 19h30: Les Underhill – "You can make a difference – being a citizen scientist with SABAP2"
• Wednesday, 17 March – Newcastle Bird Club, Newcastle Club, corner of Scott and Bird Streets, Newcastle: 18h20 for 18h30: Dieter Oschadleus – "Africa's feathered locust: the Red-billed Quelea"
• Thursday, 18 March – Wits Bird Club, Delta Park Environmental Centre, 19h30: Yahkat Barshep – "Birding and bird studies in Nigeria" and Magda Remisiewicz – "Wader migrations link Europe and Africa"

ADU representatives at the BLSA AGM will be Dieter Oschadleus (who will be doing ringing demonstrations), Doug Harebottle (who will talking about atlasing), Les Underhill (who will also be talking about atlasing) and Yahkat Barshep (PhD student in the ADU, who is from Nigeria, and who did her MSc on the Rock Firefinch, a species first described in 1998, the species in the photo above).

PhD student Sally Hofmeyr recently went on a field trip to the Overberg and Swartland, to conduct some extra CAR counts. Sally will use the data from these extra counts, together with data from extra counts which are being done by a handful of highly dedicated volunteer CAR counters, to supplement the data from the main biannual counts and work out the best way to analyse the main count data. "In the Overberg, I saw up to 185 Blue Cranes per day, with many chicks and juveniles and even some adults still apparently incubating eggs, though it was late January. I was excited to see Karoo and Southern Black Korhaans and a couple of Denham's Bustards, and a family of bat-eared foxes! In the Swartland I saw much less in the way of large terrestrial birds, as expected, but found the bird-life associated with the small dams along the way to be highly diverse and very interesting. I also saw some more foxes there."

On the final evening of her field trip Sally gave a talk on the conservation of large birds on farms to a small group of farmers just north of Darling: "These farmers have recently set up a conservancy, and were very keen to learn all they could about conserving these wonderful birds, and to pass on this knowledge to the surrounding community, which they have already started doing. They are also planning to set up a tourism route through the conservancy, and they understand that establishing good conservation credentials and wildlife viewing spots on their farms is an excellent way of attracting tourists."

Sally is training as a ringer, and will be attending the SAFRING Ringers' Conference, and presenting a talk on her research there.

Here is an invitation from the butterfly atlas to do something really different. Silvia Mecenero, Project Coordinator for the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment (SABCA) announces that South Africa's very first Butterfly Census Weekend (BCW) will take place on the weekend of 24–25 April 2010, as part of the SABCA project. Anyone can participate – there will be Beginner and Expert categories. You will need to register your team and locality. It is hoped that this event will grow into a regular annual or bi-annual event, collecting important information which can be used to monitor our butterflies over time and to help us understand the impacts of land use and climate change. For more information and to register your team, please go to http://sabca.adu.org.za/bcw.php

Please join us for this exciting event!

The photo is a Yellow Pansy, by MD Galpin from the SABCA Virtual Museum

In October last year, we welcomed Anne Voorbergen, University of Wageningen. As part of her MSc, Anne tackled a project of great conservation management importance, the impact of Kelp Gulls on breeding seabirds. Populations of Kelp Gulls in the Western Cape have increased enormously in recent decades, partly a result of the availability of lots of "unnatural" food, at rubbish tips, food processing plants, etc. As a result, the sizes of the Kelp Gull breeding colonies at many of the offshore islands have increased, and the impact of these large gulls on the other species they share the islands with is thought to be increasing.

Anne did her fieldwork on Dyer Island, and worked in close collaboration with CapeNature, and spent five months doing detailed observations of Kelp Gull behaviour. Having finished the fieldwork, she has returned to Wageningen to tackle the task of doing the data analysis and writing up her findings into a thesis. She will make appropriate management recommendations In the meantime she leaves us with this remarkable Kelp Gull photo! Thank you, Anne, for all your hard work doing observations under all the conditions the Cape weather can throw at you, although the main weather condition was gale force southeaster.

Dyer Island, just west of Cape Agulhas, is a CapeNature reserve and an Important Bird Area.

A few weeks ago, we received an email from Sara Lipshutz: "I'm an exchange student at UCT this semester, a 'semester abroad' student, coming from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. I'm part of a program called Globalization and the Environment with UCT's Department of Environmental and Geographical Studies, and we are in the process of choosing independent study projects for the semester. I am very interested in working on a project with birds and am looking to assist someone with ongoing field research. My academic interests are particularly in animal behavior and conservation."

Sara struck it lucky, and she leaves tomorrow, along with ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz and ringer Joel Avni for Barberspan Bird Sanctuary, for two weeks of fieldwork, which culminates in the SAFRING NW Parks Ringers' Conference, from 12–15 March. You can still register for this conference, but only camping is available onsite at Barberspan.

Magda and team will suss out bird ringing opportunities in and around Barberspan, so ringers can arrive and hit the ground running with a series of mini-projects we are planning for the weekend. The conference has a full programme, and Colin Jackson from Kenya, an expert in the ageing and sexing of African birds, has confirmed his attendance.

Ring number: Z47626
Ring Date: 2009/09/20
Location: Lacorzana, Araba, Spain, 4241N0253W
Age: 3(Immature), Sex: 0(Unknown)

Retrapped: 2010/01/19
Location: Clara Annafontein, 3449S1839E  

The data used for this paper is based on sightings sent to the ADU by birders, and project data (in particular SAFRING and SABAP2 data). Thanks to the citizen scientists who send in data to the ADU!

Recent sightings of quelea in the Western cape are listed on the web here.

Abstract: The Red-billed Quelea Quelea quelea has been steadily expanding its range into the Western Cape province. The earliest record is of a vagrant in 1946. The next record came from 1986 in the Karoo and since 1997 there have been annual reports of the species in the province. It has become resident in the Karoo, especially in the Beaufort West to Leeu Gamka area. In April and May 2007 there was an invasion of Red-billed Queleas in the Western Cape province, particularly on the Cape Peninsula and Overberg region. Sixty-eight percent of records were within 5 km of the coast, over a stretch of 1 000 km of coastline. Adult males in breeding plumage were frequently observed, indicating that this irruption was not limited to post-juvenile dispersal. This influx was not repeated in 2008, but from April 2008 to January 2009, monthly records of queleas were higher than the combined monthly totals in years prior to the influx. The increasing occurrence of queleas in the Western Cape province is a potential threat to a major wheat-producing area and continued monitoring is required.  

We welcome visitors any evening from now until the middle of April when the barn swallows fly back to the Northern Hemisphere. We recommend you come 30 minutes before sun set and bring your chair, sundowner, binoculars and anti-mossie cream.
We are now requesting a donation of R10 per car to help us maintain the site for the enjoyment of everyone. A donation box is available at the entrance desk. For any enquiries, bookings or directions please contact 031 568 1671.

Hilary Vickers, Chair: Lake Victoria Conservancy, 031 568 1671, 083 454 3090, email vickht at iafrica.com

The Lake Victoria Conservancy is organizing the popular monthly barn swallow ringing demonstrations for the public yet again this season. If you are interested in a close up and personal experience of the barn swallows please join us. The ringing provides ideal photographic opportunities. Booking is essential as we limit groups to 25 people per session. Contact Hilary (see above) for dates, costs, and other details.  

I am delighted to "œopen"� the new Birds in Reserves Website. It really is a pleasure to have the site up and running at last. It has taken some time but it was worth all the effort. My sincere thanks to Michael Brooks for all the IT work that has gone into this project! The site looks great and I hope that it will serve your purpose. Please follow the BIRP link on the left to go and have a look! If you have any comments, please send them on.

It is almost July and the winter CWAC season is around the corner! What is CWAC you may ask? It is the Coordinated Waterbird Counts Programme and it aims to survey waterbirds around the country. July is count month and during this time, many people from all over South Africa go out to count waterbirds in their thousands! If you want to know more about this initiative and why it is important, simply follow the link on the left of this page.