| 2010-03-13 | Les Underhill | | | 
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. | | |
| | 2010-03-13 | Les Underhill | | UCT monthly maintainance of computer systems takes place tomorrow, Sunday 14 March | The University of Cape Town computer services has a scheduled maintainance slot every month. This month's slot is tomorrow. Often, these events do not impact the ADU websites at all. We have been warned that tomorrow's slot might be longer than normal (from 09h00–20h00). The ADU websites might not be available and the processing incoming SABAP2 data might not be immediate. Any data submitted tomorrow will be queued and processed once maintainance has been completed, and the system is running normally. | | |
| | 2010-03-12 | Les Underhill | | The world is gathering at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary | 
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. | | |
| | 2010-03-10 | Les Underhill | | ADU at the Biodiversity Expo, Kirstenbosch, 25–28 March | 
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.
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| | 2010-03-09 | Les Underhill | | Postdoc Antje Steinfurth in the Antarctic | 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. | | |
| | 2010-03-08 | Les Underhill | | Last week before the Barberspan Ringers' Conference | 
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. | | |
| | 2010-03-04 | Les Underhill | | Newsletter 7 of the Hadeda Ibis Project | &rr=0)
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. | | |
| | 2010-03-02 | Les Underhill | | ADU staff and student presentations: 16–18 March | 
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). | | |
| | 2010-03-02 | Les Underhill | | Fieldwork in the Overberg and Swartland |  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. | | |
| | 2010-03-02 | Les Underhill | | Butterfly Census Weekend 24–25 April 2010 | 
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 | | |
| | 2010-03-01 | Les Underhill | | Farewell and thank you to Anne Voorbergen, University of Wageningen | 
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. | | |
| | 2010-02-27 | Les Underhill | | Final countdown to Ringers' Conference at Barberspan Nature Reserve | 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. | | |
| | 2010-02-21 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 reaches impressive milestone today – 30 000 checklists submitted |
SABAP2 now has amassed a total of 30 000 checklists.
These checklists represent one of the most precious biodiversity resources in South Africa today. They will influence government policy, and they will inform decisions taken to mitigate against the impacts of climate change.
The database and the coverage have just grown to the point at which we can begin to demonstrate changes in distribution for many species between SABAP1 and SABAP2. We will start to show some of these change maps on the SABAP2 website soon.
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| | 2010-02-18 | Doug Harebottle | | CWAC and BIRP forms |
With the departure of Marius Wheeler from the ADU, please send all BIRP and CWAC forms to Doug Harebottle (or post to: ADU, Dept of Zoology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701) in the interim.
As soon as a replacement for Marius is found we will notify all CWACers and BIRPers of the new incumbent's contact details. | | |
| | 2010-02-16 | Les Underhill | | PHEAT – Please Help Establish Autumn Timing |
SABAP2 has just started its autumn mini-project. The objective of PHEAT (Please Help Establish Autumn Timing) is to define the phenology of migration, during the 2010 departure period, from mid-February through to the end of May. SABAP2 did similar mini-projects in autumn and spring of 2009, and generated large volumes of high quality data.
The reason why it is important to quantify the timing of arrival and departure is that we live in an era of change, and one of the predictions of global climate change is that long distance migrants are at risk. One of the case studies in the booklet produced for the Copenhagen climate change conference last December described the changes between SABAP1 (1987–1991) and SABAP2 (2007– ) in the timing of both arrival and departure of Barn Swallows.
The citizen scientists of SABAP2 are encouraged to do as much fieldwork as they can manage and to generate as large a sample of checklists for as many pentads as possible. PHEAT represents the only opportunity to quantify the timing of autumn migration in 2010.
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| | 2010-02-12 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Ringing trip to Limpopo Province | | The first week of Feb 2010 involved a short trip to Platjan farm on the Limpopo River to ring primarily Red-headed Weavers, as well as other weaver species. Most Red-headed Weavers have completed breeding by February but a large active colony was found on Mayholme farm, south of Platjan. Several hundred nests were counted in the syringa and baobab trees around the main farm house. Some 75 Red-headed Weavers were caught including two recaptures from 2007. In addition, 9 chicks were ringed in nests that were low enough to reach. This is the most number of Red-headed Weavers ringed in one day. Only 394 Red-headed Weavers had been ringed or retrapped in southern Africa over the last 60 years, so this provided a substantial increase. These are also the first Red-headed Weaver chicks ringed in southern Africa (one has been ringed in Zambia). Read more about the trip here. | | |
| | 2010-02-09 | Les Underhill | | Penguin research on the Namibian Islands | Postdoc Katta Ludynia leaves tomorrow for Lüderitz: "I will be going to Namibia again to deploy GPS data loggers on breeding African Penguins. It will be the sixth season that we are deploying devices and it will be interesting to compare the different years as well as the different islands we have worked on. The results enable us to see how far penguins travel for food, where they feed, and how long their feeding trips are. We hope to be able to deploy loggers on birds on Halifax and Mercury Islands, where we already have a good data set from previous years and if possible, also on birds at Possession Island.
"We will also continue to look out for ringed penguins that have swum back from Cape Town after the oil spill near Lüderitz in April 2009. So far, over 50% of these birds have been resighted, several of them breeding and there are probably a lot more already at the different colonies that haven't been spotted yet." | | |
| | 2010-02-09 | Les Underhill | | Common Greenshank to Libya from Zimbabwe |
Italian wader researcher Nicola Baccetti, of the Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, in Bologna, emailed yesterday. "I found a South African ring a week ago in Libya. Could you please forward it to your ringing office? Ring size would fit a Turnstone or some similar-sized bird. The ring was Pretoria D08105, and the bird was shot most probably in 2005, and definitely in April or May, on a wetland called Sebkhat Bou Halgoum (between Tobruk and the Egyptian border, 31.59N 24.49E). The ring was hanging (and still is) on a string attached to the cellphone of a hunter whose name and address I ignore."
A check on the SAFRING records revealed that the ring had been put on a Common Greenshank Tringa nebularia which had been ringed as an adult 5 March 1994 at Whitehead Ponds, Chegutu, Zimbabwe, 18.08S 30.07E, by Tony Tree. The distance between the ringing site and the recovery site was 5600 km and the time elapsed was about 11 years. | | |
| | 2010-02-04 | Les Underhill | | Conference presentation: Alison Towner at the International White Shark Symposium in Hawaii |
Newly-registered MSc student, Alison Towner, will be presenting a poster at the International White Shark Symposium, being held from 7–10 February 2010, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The theme of the conference is "Re-setting Research and Conservation Objectives" for the Great White Shark Carcharodon carcharias – this defines purpose of this meeting: a gathering of leading white shark researchers from around the world to share the latest findings and discuss how they should influence modern research and conservation goals. So it represents a fantastic opportunity for Alison to attend a meeting like this right at the outset of her postgraduate studies, and we are grateful to the Dyer Island Conservation Trust for sponsoring her attendance at the meeting (and for sponsorship of her research project over the next couple of years).
Alisons's poster is entitled "Boat strike wound healing in Carcharodon carcharias" and makes the point that injuries to marine animals caused by boat strikes are problematic worldwide and the ability to survive such injuries varies markedly between species. This study reports on the near-complete healing, over a period of 10 months, of a very large gash inflicted on a Great White Shark which was struck by the propeller of a boat near Gansbaai. | | |
| | 2010-02-04 | Les Underhill | | Marta de Ponte Machado awarded PhD |
We have just heard the good news that Marta de Ponte has been informed by the Doctoral Degrees Board at UCT that she has been awarded the degree of PhD. We congratulate Marta. The thesis is entitled: Population dynamics of Great White Pelicans: causative factors and impact on other seabirds.
Marta de Ponte Machado's interest in the impact of human activities on ecosystems and her desire to understand and manage the consequences of these activities brought her to South Africa. She graduated with an MSc in Conservation Biology at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology in 2003. Her thesis examined the impact of harvesting buchu (a local endemic plant) in the wild and provided recommendations for managing the resource. Previously she had worked in the Cape Verde Islands designing a network of protected areas and drawing environmental and socio-economic management plans. Having grown up in the Canary Islands she is well aware of the complexity and fragility of ecosystem interactions, especially in the light of global change.
Her thesis examines the exponential growth of the Western Cape Great White Pelican population during the 20th century, induced by the increased availability of agricultural waste. This superabundance triggered changes in the trophic webs, strikingly the development of a new feeding behaviour by pelicans, which have become predators of seabirds on the islands off the coast of the Western Cape, adapting cooperative hunting techniques used to capture aquatic prey to the land, and causing concern for the conservation of declining populations of local breeding seabirds. With the objective of curbing the impact of pelican predation on seabird populations, a management intervention was implemented on two islands of the West Coast National Park and proved successful to reduce predation. In addition, the Western Cape pelican population was found to be genetically less variable than other southern African breeding colonies, possibly due to the demographic bottleneck experienced during the early part of the 20th century and to the low frequency of immigration into this population. However, pelicans from the Western Cape dispersed and some individuals entered into contact with pelicans further north, indicating that cooperative seabird-eating behaviour could be exported to other populations. Her thesis amalgamates concepts and methodologies from the fields of Population Ecology, Life-History, Population Genetics, Behavioural Ecology, Avian Disease Ecology, Adaptive Management and Conservation, in order to investigate the complex ecological interactions among Great White Pelicans, human landscapes and locally breeding seabird species.
Supervisor: Professor Les G Underhill (Animal Demography Unit, Zoology Department). Co-supervisors: Professor Peter G Ryan (Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Zoology Department), Dr Rob JM Crawford (Marine and Coastal Management, Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism, South Africa) and Dr Rauri Bowie (University of California at Berkeley).
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| | 2010-02-02 | Les Underhill | | Report from Barberspan, and the SAFRING Ringers' Conference |
ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz is currently at Barberspan Nature Reserve doing fieldwork. This is the site of the SAFRING Ringers' Conference next month.
Magda reports:
"We are having very good catches of waders – more than 60 in less than a week. Little Stints and Kittlitz's Plover are abundant, and there are also having more Ringed Plovers and Common Sandpipers than usual. There are lots of ducks and we trapped a few Yellow-billed Ducks in our walk-in traps for waders. There is also a
mixed flock Lesser and Greater Flamingos containing about 3000 birds.
"We are also making some local arrangements for the Ringers' Conference. There is enthusiasm here for all ringers attending to participate in a large quelea ringing project during that weekend.
"This past weekend the waterbird count was done for CWAC, coordinated by Mafeking Bird Club and the Westvaal Bird Club."
The dates of the Ringers Conference are 12–15 March. Dieter Oschadleus, SAFRING coordinator, says:
"Registrations for Barberspan are rolling in at a steady pace.
There are still quite a few places open but don't wait too long to
register, to ensure you get the type of accommodation you would like.
This conference is open to anyone interested in
ringing in particular, and the study of birds in general."
Details are on the SAFRING website
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| | 2010-01-29 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Barn Swallow roost near Durbanville | | A Barn Swallow roost was found near Durbanville last year and several hundred swallows were ringed. This summer the Tygerberg ringers are ringing there again and in recent days were excited to catch two birds with foreign rings, one from the UK and one from Spain. The details for the latter arrived at SAFRING today:
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
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| | 2010-01-28 | Les Underhill | | Paper: Seabird predation by Great White Pelicans Pelecanus onocrotalus at Dassen Island |
Marta de Ponte Machado is co-author of a newly published paper on predation of seabirds by pelicans on Dassen Island. The abstract below tells the story.
Mwema MM, de Ponte Machado M, Ryan PG 2010. Breeding seabirds at Dassen Island, South Africa: chances of surviving Great White Pelican predation. Endangered Species Research 9: 125–131.
ABSTRACT: Seabird predation by Great White Pelicans Pelecanus onocrotalus is an unusual phenomenon that has become increasingly frequent in the Western Cape, South Africa. We report the scale of pelican predation and its impact on the breeding success of five seabird species monitored at Dassen
Island in 2006. Pelican predation was observed on chicks of Kelp Gulls Larus dominicanus, Crowned
Cormorants Phalacrocorax coronatus and Cape Cormorants Phalacrocorax capensis. No predation on
eggs was seen. Breeding success for four of the five species studied was low, with the White-breasted Cormorants Phalacrocorax lucidus having the highest breeding success (0.56 fledglings per nest). Cape Cormorants and Bank Cormorants Phalacrocorax neglectus did not fledge any chicks, while Crowned Cormorants had a breeding success of 0.08 fledglings per nest. Kelp Gulls had a hatching success of 46%, but only a few chicks fledged, giving a breeding success of 0.06 fledglings per nest. Pelican predation poses a
threat to at least three of the five seabirds studied, all of which are endemic to southern Africa. Three species are globally Endangered or Near Threatened, and pelican predation places additional pressure on these species. Management actions are needed to reduce or eliminate pelican predation.
The journal Endangered Species Research is open access, and therefore the pdf of the paper can be downloaded directly.
Paper 3 of 2010. | | |
| | 2010-01-22 | Les Underhill | | Provisional programme: Ringers Conference at Barberspan 12–15 March 2010 | Here is an outline of the programme for the SAFRING Ringers Conference!
Thursday 11 March: first participants arrive
Friday 12 March: morning ringing session
more participants arrive
16h00–18h30: evening ringing session
19h00: Introduction to the research projects for the weekend
19h30: Talk by Mark Anderson, BirdLife South Africa, Kimberley's pink gems
Saturday 13 March: morning ringing session till 10h00
11h00–13h00: First set of presentations
13h00–16h00: siesta (with wader and duck trapping going on!)
16h00–20h00: evening ringing session
20h00: social event
Sunday 14 March: morning ringing session till 10h00
11h00–13h00: Second set of presentations
13h00–16h00: siesta (with wader and duck trapping going on!)
16h00–20h00: evening ringing session
20h00: social and discussion of the weekend's projects
Sunday 14 March: morning ringing session till 10h00
departure of participants
Research projects and ringing activities offered to conference participants:
– Red-billed Quelea capture-recapture project for monitoring population size and movements
– Survey of bird species diversity of reedbeds
– White-browed Sparrow-Weaver capture-recapture project
– Wader ringing
– Duck ringing
– Atlasing!
Further details on the SAFRING website – click on Barberspan 2010. | | |
| | 2010-01-18 | Les Underhill | | There is funding to capture historical seabirds at sea data for AS@S, the seabird atlas | | The South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF) is administered
by SANBI. It exists to assist in managing biodiversity information, a national treasure. Last year a call went out for proposals to fund the digitization of
long-term datasets. Enter the Percy FitzPatrick Institute, which created and
curates an amazing record of at-sea observations of seabirds dating back to
the late 1960s. All on hand-written cards piled up in a store-room. This was
an obvious candidate for funding digitization, and with the development of
AS@S, the atlas of seabirds at sea (http://seabirds.adu.org.za), there was now a perfect platform for incorporating the data. Peter
Ryan (from the FitzPatrick Insititute) worked with teams under Les Underhill
(ADU) and Ross Wanless (BirdLife South Africa) to put together the proposal.
Late in 2009 it was announced that the application was successful. Once
captured, this historical dataset will make AS@S instantly one of the most
valuable seabird spatial databases on earth! | | |
| | 2010-01-11 | Dieter Oschadleus | | An irruption of Red-billed Quelea in the Western Cape province, South Africa | | New paper: Oschadleus HD, 2009. An irruption of Red-billed Quelea Quelea quelea in the Western Cape province, South Africa. Ostrich 80:193-196
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.
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| | 2010-01-03 | Les Underhill | | ADU post-doc joins expedition to the Falkland Islands | Katta Ludynia’s experience with attaching data loggers to seabirds generated an invitation to her to participate in an expedition to the Falkland Islands. The expedition was lead by Petra Quillfeldt of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology at Vogelwarte Radolfzell in Germany.
Katta spent a month in the Falklands over November and December and was based on New Island. Currently she is back in Germany, and on the verge of returning to Cape Town for the second year of her post-doc, having spent Christmas with her family. Katta reports: "While I am enjoying the snow in northern Europe, my collegues from the Max Planck Institute are still busy deploying Rockhopper
Penguins with GPS data loggers. The birds that I deployed data loggers on during the incubation period swam almost all the way to Argentina while the birds that are being deployed now during the chick guard stage stay closer to the colony, returning mostly the same day. We will compare the different foraging strategies between different breeding stages as well as between different years. After finishing my post-doc at the ADU, I will return to New Island for another season in 2011. I am looking forward to spending more time on this fascinating island but right now I am happy to return to Cape Town, to the summer, to my collegues at the ADU and also to work with African Penguins (although they bite much harder then Rockhoppers!)"
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| | 2010-01-02 | Les Underhill | | 34% coverage and 1.5 million records | Pretty close to the start of 2010, SABAP2 reached two useful milestones.
At the start of 2009, 18% of pentads had been visited just once. Exactly one year later, we are on 34%. If we could manage another 16% in 2010, that would get us to 50% at the end of the year. But that is simply unrealistic, because unatlased pentads are getting farther and farther away from most atlasers. But it would be nice to end 2010 somewhere in the upper 40 percents.
The 1.5 million records need to be seen in the context of having reached one million at the very end of June last year, six months ago. If we can maintain the atlasing momentum of the past six months, we will have achieved a million records in the year from mid-2009 to mid-2010.
This new year message highlights the twin goals of SABAP2. To go WIDE and to cover as many of the seventeen thousands pentads in the atlas region as possible. To go DEEP and to get lots of pentads visited multiple times – it is for pentads with super-abundant data that we will be able to detect subtle changes in species composition, subtle changes in species distribution, and subtle changes in the timing of migration.
Thank you, Team SABAP2, for your magnificent contributions to the project. We are in the process of setting up one of the best early warning systems of environmental change ever devised, anywhere on the planet. | | |
| | 2009-12-18 | Les Underhill | | Farewell to Marius Wheeler |
After six years at the helm of the Coordinated Waterbird Counts project, CWAC, Marius Wheeler leaves the ADU to take up a new and challenging position at CapeNature from the beginning of 2010. Marius has quietly and conscientiously built up the momentum of waterbird counts in South Africa. He has also kept the Birds In Reserves Project, BIRP, on track. On top of that, he has made an enormous contribution to the ADU as a whole, and has made a decisive input to the ADU "ethos". We will miss him greatly. We wish him all the best in his new position.
Marius says: "I have really enjoyed the challenges that CWAC and BIRP have presented to me and hope that the progress made will be built upon and even expanded further. Thanks to all of you that have helped the CWAC project in so many ways. Your contributions were always welcome and I appreciated the input. I hope that CWAC will go from strength to strength. I look forward to taking up my new position with CapeNature."
Marius will be based in Porterville, and his territory will be in the northern region of the Western Cape. He will work at the interface between "Research" and "Management" teams at CapeNature – in other words, he will facilitate the communication between the science and the action.
The post of project manager for CWAC will be advertized early next year.
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| | 2009-12-12 | Les Underhill | | MCM Award for Newi Makhado | A few weeks ago, Newi Makhado featured in the ADU's "Latest News" because the examination process for his PhD thesis had been completed, and he is due to graduate, along with Mariette Wheeler, at the Faculty of Science graduation ceremony this Monday afternoon.
This week, at Marine and Coastal Management’s end of year function, Newi received the Deputy-Director General’s "Young Innovator" of the Year award. The "Young Innovator" is someone under the age of 35 who has shown innovation and application in his/her field of work, and who has performed excellently and exceptionally well.
Well done, Newi.
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| | 2009-12-12 | Les Underhill | | Great White Pelicans in Madrid, Spain | Marta da Ponte submitted her PhD for examination a couple of months ago, and is back home in Spain for the summer (or winter!) holidays. She is using the period to explore options into the future. She grew up in the Canary Islands.
On Friday she gave a presentation on her PhD research at the Museum of Natural History of Madrid, where she is visiting one of the research groups. Her host at the museum is Dr David Vieites, of the Spanish Scientific Research Council.
Marta's talk was on Population dynamics of Great White Pelicans in southern Africa: causative factors and influence on other seabirds and the summary of the content runs like this:
ABSTRACT: The exponential growth of the Western Cape Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus population during the 20th century was partly caused by the increased availability of agricultural offal to opportunistic and scavenging bird species. This superabundance had ecological and behavioural implications, triggering a new feeding behaviour by pelicans on the islands off the coast of the Western Cape. Pelicans adapted cooperative hunting techniques used to capture aquatic prey to the land, shifting from a mostly piscivorous diet to eat large numbers of seabird chicks. The spread of these novel foraging techniques in the Western Cape suggested cultural transmission of behaviour and caused concern for the conservation of declining populations of local breeding seabirds. The Western Cape pelican population was found to be genetically less variable than other southern African breeding colonies, possibly due to the demographic bottleneck experienced during the early part of the 20th century and to the low frequency of immigration into this population. However, pelicans from the Western Cape dispersed and some individuals entered into contact with pelicans further north, indicating that cooperative seabird-eating behaviour could be exported to other populations. Also, concern was raised with regards to the close contact between domestic and wild animals feeding on agricultural offal and the potential risk for the spread of disease. Although the incidence of disease in the Great White Pelican population did not indicate an immediate risk, the prevalence of pathogens on this population indicated that they could constitute a reservoir of zoonoses of ecological and economical relevance. In addition, with the objective of curbing the impact of pelican predation on seabird populations, a management intervention was implemented on two islands of the West Coast National Park and proved successful to reduce predation. This study amalgamates a diverse set of concepts and methodologies from the fields of Population Ecology, Life-History, Population Genetics, Behavioural Ecology, Avian Disease Ecology and Conservation. More specifically, it employed techniques such as mark-recapture, direct observation of behaviour, molecular analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, demographic modelling, adaptive management and microbiological analyses, in order to investigate the complex ecological interactions among Great White Pelicans, human landscapes and locally breeding seabird species
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| | 2009-12-11 | Les Underhill | | The ups and downs of the Kelp Gull |
This new paper with three ADU-linked co-authors describes the fortunes of the Kelp Gull in the Western Cape. Numbers increased in the 20th century and decreased in the 21st. The paper tries to explain why this happened.
Crawford RJM, Underhill LG, Altwegg R, Dyer BM, Upfold L. 2009. Trends in numbers of Kelp Gulls Larus dominicanus off western South Africa, 1978–2007. Ostrich 80:139–143.
ABSTRACT: The number of Kelp Gulls Larus dominicanus breeding at 11 islands in Western Cape province, South Africa, increased during the period 1978 to 1999–2000 and then decreased. The increase came after removal of controls on gulls and was associated with supplementary food provided by fish factories and rubbish tips. The decrease resulted from predation of gull chicks at some colonies by an increased population of Great White Pelicans Pelecanus onocrotalus. At Dassen Island, the density of gull nests remained constant as the colony doubled, but decreased by 50% as the colony decreased. At Dassen and Schaapen islands, the clutch size increased after pelicans started eating chicks. Numbers of gulls at two southern colonies where pelicans are seldom encountered have increased recently. This may have been influenced by shifts to the south and east of several fish stocks and their associated fisheries.
The pdf is available from Les Underhill. | | |
| | 2009-12-11 | Doug Harebottle | | SABAP2 staffing over the festive season |
We are approaching the end of 2009 and what a year it has been. We started by BASHing our way through summer, lighted our autumn atlasing with LAMP, changed CHAMELEON colours during winter, had a WHAMB bam time in spring and now doing it all again by DeJaVUing this summer!
It really has been a busy atlasing year but a very successful one and our deepest thanks to all of you for your fantastic efforts, dedication and support. We see it as a wonderful achievement to have reached 33% coverage at this stage. Your "citizen science" contributions have been outstanding and you can be assured that you are making a huge contribution to biodiversity conservation - just take a look at the Climate change booklet that the ADU produced together with SANBI to see just how 'your' data is being put to good use. The booklet forms part of the delegates' package at the climate change meeting currently taking place in Copenhagen!
With the summer holidays upon us the project team will be taking some well earned rest over this period, so please take note of the following periods that we will be 'out of the office':
Doug Harebottle: Away from 14 December and back in office on 11 January
Michael Brooks: Away from 17 December and back in office on 4 January
Les Underhill: Away from 17 December and back in office on 11 January
The card submission system will hopefully run smoothly during this period but in the event the systems should go down for any reason we will endeavour to get these up and running as soon as possible. For most of the time we will all be off-line and any messages will only get answered intermittently or on our return to office, so please be patient in this regard. However, any URGENT queries or issues can be sent to Les (les.underhill@uct.ac.za) who will be on-line from time to time over the Christmas/New Year period.
Wishing you all happy holidays, a merry Christmas and new year filled with many atlas checklists!
Doug, Les and Michael
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| | 2009-12-10 | Les Underhill | | You go to Chile to study the Peruvian Tern |
PhD student Justine Braby has done most of her fieldwork in the Sperrgebiet around Lüderitz in Namibia. Her study species is the diminutive Damara Tern, one of seven "little" terns in the 45–50 g category. By comparison, a Swift Tern weighs about four times as much, 220 g. Justine is now in the Atacama Desert at Antofagasta, a town in northern Chile, studying one of the other "lightweights", the Peruvian Tern.
Justine reports: "Four weeks of field work near Antofagasta, where the cold Humboldt Current meets the driest desert in the world, has shed some light on the differences and similarities of the adaptations between the Peruvian Tern and the Damara Tern, which breeds where the cold Benguela Current meets the Namib Desert. The Peruvian Tern lays two eggs and has an extremely similar ecological pattern to the Damara Tern, and it has to face extremities to the same degree – this desert has the highest radiation in the world!
"However, adaptation to predators like the jackal in the Namib Desert has forced the Damara Tern to lay one egg. Large numbers of predators along the Namib Desert coastline have arisen mainly from seal populations – along with a higher biodiversity than the Atacama. Lacking the same predation pressure, the Peruvian Tern can afford to lay two eggs – although during breeding seasons of low prey availability it will predominantly have single-egg clutches.
"In the last two weeks I have given two presentations on the Damara Tern and its biology and conservation in the Namib Desert. The first was to the academics and students of the University of Antofagasta, the second was to the sponsors and institutions surrounding the conservation of the Peruvian Tern here in northern Chile."
Justine's travel to Chile was sponsored by a UCT postgraduate travel grant. We are also extremely grateful to Professor Carlos Guerra, University of Antofagasta, for hosting this visit. And the students of the Peruvian Tern research group have made Justine feel at home, and her Spanish is improving in leaps and bounds. | | |
| | 2009-12-02 | Les Underhill | | Birding counts for climate change |
The booklet Birds and environmental change: building an early warning system in South Africa will be launched this evening.
The environment in which we live and on which we depend is undergoing rapid modification because of changes in global climate and because of land-transforming human activities. Our ability to weather these changes depends on our capacity to detect the first signs of them.
From cranes to korhaans to queleas, this new booklet describes how monitoring and research on birds can provide us with the early warning signs that we need. And there are many such signs in South Africa: numbers of African Penguins plummet; Red-billed Queleas, the "feathered locust", invades new areas; and Southern Black Korhaans disappear from places where they were plentiful 20 years ago.
Many of the findings in the booklet are based on data collected for scientific programmes by trained members of the public. By recording and counting birds at particular places and specific times of the year, these "citizen scientists" are helping scientists to build a jigsaw puzzle of our biodiversity. The booklet contains some of the first comparisons made between SABAP1 and SABAP2.
This 16-page illustrated booklet, downloadable at http://adu.org.za/docs/climate_change_booklet.pdf, was produced by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and the Animal Demography Unit, with financial support from the Danish Goverment. Delegates to the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen later in the month will receive a copy. It is of especial interest to conservationists, teachers, politicians and farmers but should really be made compulsory reading for all citizens.
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| | 2009-12-01 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Barberspan 12-15 March 2010 | | Registration for the ringers conference is open! This conference will be held at Barberspan Nature Reserve. This site features well in most ADU projects, notably CWAC, BIRP, SABAP and SAFRING but irrespective of you having visited Barberspan or not, this is an ideal opportunity to visit. Even non-ringers will benefit by listening to local and international speakers and seeing a variety of birds in the hand, and interacting with birders and ringers. Read more and register here by filling in the online form. | | |
| | 2009-11-27 | Doug Harebottle | | 12th Pan-African Ornithological Congress: on-line proceedings | In September 2008, the Animal Demography Unit, together with the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology (PFIAO) and the AP Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI), based in Nigeria, hosted the 12th Pan-African Ornithological Congress at Goudini Spa, near Worcester. This international congress which is held every four years attracts not only African ornithologists but also European and North American researchers and scientists. Over 300 delegates attended the congress and many interesting presentations were given, ranging from the impacts of climate change on African birds to moult and migration, and how volunteers contribute to biodiversity datasets. There were also round-table discussions and topics here included inter alia Red listing criteria for African raptors, the future of CWAC, a conservation action plan for the Shoebill and ethno-ornithology in Africa.
The proceedings from the congress are being published on-line and the first four papers are now available to view/download. Go to http://paoc12.adu.org.za and click on the 'Proceedings' link. We encourage you to take a look at the website and these initial papers, and although the papers are largely scientific articles the abstract (summary) should give you feel for what the paper is all about. The congress provides a convenient way to highlight and showcase current bird research and initiatives in Africa and we will be working hard to get as many of the remaining papers/abstracts/summaries on-line as soon as possible to give you an indication of what has been done or is being done.
The website also contains links to the 'PAOC12 programme' and a 'list of past congresses'. | | |
| | 2009-11-26 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Colin Jackson at Barberspan 12-15 March 2010 | Remember to diarise 12-15 March 2010 for the next ringers conference, to be held at Barberspan, Nort-West Province. There will be many exciting talks at the ringers conference as well as many opportunities for ringing. Registration and other details will appear on SAFRINGs web pages soon. Ringers, trainees, and anyone wanting to know more about ringing is welcome to attend.
One of the guest speakers is Colin Jackson, an expert on ageing and sexing African birds in the hand. Colin lives and rings in Kenya, including at the well known site for migrant birds at Ngulia. Last weekend Colin and a team of ringers tried a new site: read more view here. Don't miss this opportunity of meeting with Colin (again) at Barberspan! | | |
| | 2009-11-25 | Les Underhill | | Mariëtte Wheeler‘s PhD on the effects of human disturbance on seabirds and seals |
Mariëtte Wheeler has just received the excellent news that she graduates with a PhD on 14 December. The title of her thesis is The effects of human disturbance on the seabirds and seals at sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Congratulations, Mariëtte.
Mariëtte Wheeler describes herself as a conservationist interested in the interaction between animals, their environment and the influence of human activities on them. Apart from six months spent at the University of Pretoria during her second year, she completed her BSc, BSc(Hons) and MSc, all cum laude, at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. She then followed her dream to live on remote sub-Antarctic Marion Island, where she did the field work for her PhD, investigating the influence of human activities on seabirds and seals.
The thesis investigated the impacts of logistic disturbance (especially helicopter noise), incidental pedestrian disturbance and research disturbance on the albatrosses, penguins and seals of Marion Island. Mariëtte spent many hours in the cold sub-Antarctic environment collecting data to compare the behaviour of animals before, during and after disturbance events. She also measured chick survival and hormone levels of birds relative to the levels of disturbance that they experienced. Results indicated that certain human activities on the island affected the behaviour, breeding success and physiology of some species. Previous regulations for the management of wildlife disturbance on Marion Island, South Africa‘s only Special Nature Reserve, were based on ad hoc observations. This study provides quantitative evidence of the effects of human disturbance and makes recommendations for the management of disturbance at the island.
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| | 2009-11-24 | Les Underhill | | News from ADU PhD graduate Anton Wolfaardt from the Falkland Islands | Anton Wolfaardt's PhD thesis, awarded in December 2007, was entitled The effects of oiling and rehabilitation on the breeding productivity and annual moult and breeding cycles of African Penguins. Before launching into his penguin research, Anton spent a year on Marion Island, monitoring albatrosses and petrels. He now has a post in the Falkland Islands, in the South Atlantic Ocean.
"I am currently based in the Falkland Islands, coordinating albatross and petrel conservation work in the South Atlantic Overseas Territories of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom ratified the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) in 2004, soon after it came into force. In March 2008, I took up the position of ACAP coordinator for the UK South Atlantic Overseas Territories of the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. I work together with the UK government, the Overseas Territory governments and many other stakeholders to ensure that the UK meets their obligations under ACAP. The work is diverse including monitoring the status and trends of albatross and petrel populations, seabird bycatch mitigation, development and implementation of policy and awareness raising and outreach work.
"I have been fortunate to visit South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha (and Gough Island) as part of my job. As one of the founder signatories of ACAP, South Africa is very active in all aspects of ACAP work, so I continue to work closely with many colleagues and friends from South Africa. There are other links as well. Last year, I had my surfboard delivered from Cape Town to South Georgia onboard the SA Agulhas, which called in at South Georgia to drop off weather buoys. If anybody is planning a trip to the Falklands (or South Georgia), please get in touch. It‘s always great to meet up with South Africans here in the Falklands.
"My email address is anton.wolfaardt@jncc.gov.uk" | | |
| | 2009-11-19 | Les Underhill | | Newi Makhado's PhD on the impact of predation by Cape Fur Seals on seabirds | We congratulate Newi Makhado – he has just heard that he will be awarded his PhD at the graduation ceremony on 14 December. The thesis is entitled: "Investigation of the impact of fur seals on the conservation status of seabirds at islands off South Africa and at the Prince Edward Islands".
Newi obtained his BSc, BSc(Hons) and UED from the University of Venda and his MSc from the University of Pretoria. He is currently employed as Marine Scientist by the Department of Environmental Affairs in the Branch Marine and Coastal Management (MCM). He is responsible for the management and conservation of seabirds at the islands off the coast of South Africa and the Prince Edward Islands. In 1999, Newi was employed by Mammal Research Institute under the University of Pretoria, in conjunction with the Department of Environmental Affairs to conduct field studies monitoring various sub-Antarctic pinnipeds (seals) at Marion Island. This 14 month period inspired his career in Marine Science. He completed his MSc on the diet of the two fur seal species at Marion Island at the University of Pretoria in 2002. Upon completion, he joined MCM as an intern and registered for a PhD degree with the University of Cape Town.
The thesis investigated the impact of predation by Cape Fur Seals on seabirds breeding in South African Islands, including the Prince Edwards Islands. It assesses the impact of seal predation on those seabirds especially Cape Gannets, Cape Cormorants and African Penguins. These seabirds are of conservation concern, in IUCN threat categories. The fieldwork involved long hours of observation from vantage points on islands, quantifying the rate and impact of seal predation on seabirds. It also investigated the influence of environmental factors on the rates of seal predation and the possibility of mitigation measures for managing the mortality to seabirds caused by seals. This information was required by conservation management to assess the sustainability of the observed levels of predation. In some cases, the seal-induced mortality was not sustainable. His work has led to a much better understanding of this interaction and how it may best be handled.
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| | 2009-11-15 | Les Underhill | | Leopard population study in the Boland Mountains, Western Cape | The Cape Leopard Trust, in partnership with the Animal Demography Unit, CapeNature and local landowners, is setting up a project to study the population of leopards in the Boland Mountains. The project will require a postgraduate student, probably at MSc level. The project will use both established and cutting edge research techniques to determine leopard densities in a vast study area which includes the Limietberg Nature Reserve, Kogelberg Nature and Biosphere Reserves, Jonkershoek Mountains, Hottentots-Holland Mountains and Groot Winterhoek Mountains. These mountain ranges represent key conservation areas for the leopard population in the Western Cape. The student will need to have a passion for spending extended periods of time in remote wilderness areas and not be daunted by the resulting challenges.
More details about the project and studentship from Les Underhill or Quinton Martins. | | |
| | 2009-11-12 | Les Underhill | | Multidisciplinary review of the Benguela region |
ADU research associate Rob Crawford has co-authored a newly-published and major overview of the Benguela region. There have been lots of reviews of the Benguela Upwelling region from the perspectives of various disciplines. There has recently been a stimulus for a coherent and multidisciplinary study of the entire Benguela region from Cabinda in Angola to the Nelson Mandela Metropole (Port Elizabeth) on the south coast of South Africa. While much
focus has been on the continental shelf areas and the associated
fishery and mineral resources, there has been a growing awareness
of the large basin scale ocean and atmospheric forcing of the
Benguela region, which comprises a number of fronts or boundary
regions. This overview attempted to provide a concise multidisciplinary
description of the major features of the Benguela system.
L Hutchings, CD van der Lingen, LJ Shannon, RJM Crawford, HMS Verheye,
CH Bartholomae, AK van der Plas, D Louw, A Kreiner, M Ostrowski, Q Fidel, RG Barlow, T Lamont, J Coetzee, F Shillington, J Veitch, JC Currie, PMS Monteiro. 2009. The Benguela Current: An ecosystem of four components. Progress in Oceanography. doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2009.07.046
You can get a pdf from Les Underhill.
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| | 2009-11-11 | Les Underhill | | Marine Protected Areas in the Benguela Upwelling System |
Rene Navarro is a co-author of a paper which estimates the overlap between
vulnerable seabirds and South African purse seine fishery activities and contended that there is a significant overlap and evidence for
competition. The paper also aimed to reveal areas of important conservation value and to help in the design of marine protected areas
L Pichegru, PG Ryan, C Le Bohec, CD van der Lingen, R Navarro, S Petersen, S Lewis, J van der Westhuizen, D Gremillet. 2009.
Overlap between vulnerable top predators and
fisheries in the Benguela upwelling system:
implications for marine protected areas. Marine Ecology Progress Series 391: 199-208
ABSTRACT: Industrial-scale fisheries are often thought to reduce food availability for top predators.
It is essential to estimate the spatial and temporal overlap over a fine scale between fisheries and predators
during their breeding season, when their energy demand is greatest and when they are most
spatially constrained, in order to understand and manage this potential impact on their populations.
In the Benguela upwelling region, two endemic vulnerable seabirds, Cape Gannets Morus capensis and
African Penguins Spheniscus demersus, mainly eat anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus and sardine
Sardinops sagax, both of which are exploited by the purse-seine fishery. A recent eastward displacement
of small pelagic fish off the South African coast has reduced fish availability for both birds and
fisheries along the west coast. Using GPS-recorders, we studied the foraging dispersal of birds from
8 colonies containing 95% of the global Cape Gannet and 60% of the global African Penguin populations
to assess their overlap with fish catches. Despite the fact that bird data were gathered at very
fine spatial and temporal scales (meters and hours), and fisheries data were recorded at much coarser
spatial and temporal scales (20 km and months), there was clear overlap in areas used. The main foraging
areas of both species were located where purse-seine fisheries caught most fish, with most
catches occurring during the birds’ breeding season. As birds and fisheries also overlap in the size of
the targeted prey and the depth of exploitation, our study suggests the potential for intense competition
between purse-seine fisheries and decreasing seabird populations in the southern Benguela.
Long-term protection of these seabird species requires the inclusion of a suitable ecological buffer
when setting fishery quotas, and implementing marine protected areas closed to fishing around key
breeding sites and foraging hotspots may improve their breeding success.
The pdf is available from Rene Navarro.
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| | 2009-11-11 | Les Underhill | | Birds and Environmental Change: building an early warning system in South Africa | | The pdf of this 16 page booklet can be downloaded off this website. It is currently the third item from the bottom on the left hand side menu. | | |
| | 2009-11-10 | Les Underhill | | Energetic costs of foraging in breeding | This new paper aimed to (1) investigate the energy expenditure during foraging of Cape Gannets, and (2) understand how foraging behaviour and energy expenditure are associated with environmental conditions.
Ralf HE Mullers, Rene A Navarro, Serge Daan, Joost M Tinbergen, Harro AJ Meijer 2009. Energetic costs of foraging in breeding Cape Gannets Morus capensis Marine Ecology Progress Seroes 393: 161-171.
ABSTRACT: Seabirds fly considerable distances during the breeding season in search for food for
themselves and their young. Variation in the distance from the breeding colony to the offshore food
resources is expected to impact the energy spent on foraging trips. In 2005-06 and 2006-07 we studied
foraging behaviour, derived time budgets during foraging trips (commuting, hunting or drifting
on the sea surface) and measured the associated energy expenditure in two colonies of breeding Cape
Gannets Morus capensis. Around Ichaboe Island (Namibia) the winds were stronger and more variable
than at Malgas Island (South Africa). Gannet foraging trip duration did not vary between the
islands, but at Ichaboe gannets spent more time on hunting and less time drifting on the sea surface
compared to Malgas birds. Gannets from Malgas made more dives during foraging trips than Ichaboe
gannets (75 and 43 dives respectively). Energy expenditure during foraging trips (TEE) was estimated
on average at 4203 kJ per day (SD=693, n=27), which was 5.5 times basal metabolic rate (BMR), and did not differ between the islands. Energetic costs of foraging increased with wind speed and the fraction
flying during foraging trips. The average flight costs were estimated at 85 W, after correction for wind
speed. The increased energetic cost during foraging at Malgas was associated with the large number
of dives and less profitable winds: taking off after each plunge-dive would be more costly in weaker
winds. The fact that TEE did not differ between the islands might suggest that Cape gannets at both
islands were foraging at the boundaries of their sustainable energetic expenditure.
The pdf is available from Rene Navarro.
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| | 2009-11-10 | Les Underhill | | The Peruvian Tern in Chile and Peru | PhD student Justine Braby has been awarded a UCT postgraduate student travel grant to visit Chile and Peru. The objective of the visit is to get to know the Peruvian Tern, the species which is most similar to her own study species, the Damara Tern. She leaves for Chile today.
Justine says: "I have followed the Damara Tern, as part of my PhD, to some weird and wonderful places. From extinct lagoons filled with 20 km of dried mollusk shells in the restricted diamond area of southern Namibia, to the wind-blown gravel plains of central Namibia; and even to the littered beaches of Lagos, Nigeria, where the Damara Terns spend go for the winter. Now my quest
takes me to the breeding grounds of its closest relative, the Peruvian Tern.
"The Peruvian Tern is similar to the Damara Tern in almost every way; from its size to its behaviour; even to the selection of breeding habitat. For both of them this includes vast stretches of mainland desert sometimes kilometers from the sea. I travel to Antofagasta, Chile, where possibly the biggest, and most studied, colony of breeding Peruvian Terns in the world are found, on the Peninsula de Mejillones. This breeding ground is found within a major copper mine which brings in great revenue to its closest town, Antofagasta. This situation is similar to the monitoring of breeding colonies I did within the Sperrgebiet, an area restricted due to diamond mining. I will spend more than a month in Antofagasta, during November and December, the peak breeding time of the Peruvian Tern, joining Dr Carlos Guerra's (University of Antofagasta) team of students monitoring the Peruvian Tern. Then I will travel to southern Peru and join other peers within the field to monitor the small colonies of Peruvian Terns in Peru. The Peruvian Tern predominantly lays two-egg clutches in Peru and only one-egg clutches in Chile. Because the Damara Tern is the only one of the 'little' terns that predominantly lays one-egg clutches, the ecological conditions of the Peruvian Tern in Chile and Peru may shed some light on this evolutionary adaptation. In addition I will share information on monitoring, conservation and protection measures with the scientists working on the Peruvian Tern as I learn the techniques they use on their small and interesting desert-breeding seabird. When I return to the Namibian coastline and its Damara Tern at the end of the year I hope to have gained some valuable experience and information on its cousin, the Peruvian Tern."
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| | 2009-11-09 | Les Underhill | | Swift Terns breeding influenced by abundance and distribution of prey | A new paper, by ADU research associate Rob Crawford, documents recent changes in the numbers of swift terns breeding in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces. It considers how they may have been influenced by the abundance, and recent south and east displacements, of sardine and anchovy. It compares the responses of swift terns to the altered distribution of prey with those of African Penguins and Cape Gannets. Unlike the penguin and the gannet, Swift Terns show little fidelity to breeding localities and so might be expected more rapidly to adjust their breeding distributions to an altered distribution of prey.
Crawford RJM (2009) A recent increase of Swift Terns Thalasseus bergii off South Africa – The possible influence of an altered abundance and distribution of prey. Progress in Oceanography. doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2009.07.021
ABSTRACT:In the 2000s, there were large increases in the numbers of Swift Terns Thalasseus bergii breeding in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa, which are most plausibly attributed to good recruitment and to an increase in the proportion of mature birds breeding. Numbers increased coincidentally with a greatly increased abundance of two of the main prey species of Swift Terns, sardine Sardinops sagax
and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus, and remained high as these resources decreased. After 2005, numbers of Swift Terns breeding in the north and central portions of the Western Cape decreased, whereas numbers breeding farther south in that province increased. This followed displacements to the south and east
of sardine and anchovy. In southern Africa, Swift Terns show low fidelity to breeding localities, which enables a rapid adjustment of the location of breeding to an altered availability of prey. For two seabirds that feed mainly on sardine and anchovy, but once breeding show high fidelity to colonies, African Penguin Spheniscus demersus and Cape Gannet Morus capensis, proportions breeding in the south and east also
increased, but there were substantial decreases in overall numbers breeding in the Western Cape.
The pdf is available from Les Underhill | | |
| | 2009-11-05 | Les Underhill | | Primary moult of adult Wood Sandpipers | Magda Remisiewicz, ADU postdoc, is the lead author of an analysis of the primary moult of a species of wader that occurs mostly at inland, freshwater habitats. All of our earlier papers on the moult of waders dealt with coastal species. You can get the pdf of the paper from Magda
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.
ABSRACT: Migrant waders using freshwater habitats are hypothesized to have slower primary
moult than waders using coastal habitats. We chose the Wood Sandpiper
Tringa glareola as a representative species using the freshwater habitats and
compare its moult pattern with a range of fresh-water and coastal wader
species to test the habitat hypothesis. Only fragmentary descriptions of Wood
Sandpipers‘ primary moult in their sub-Saharan non-breeding quarters had
existed. We analysed the primary moult formulae of 1496 adult Wood Sandpipers
obtained in southern Africa. The Underhill & Zucchini moult model was
used to estimate the timing and duration of moult for all 10 primaries combined
and for each primary individually. We also estimated the rate of production of
feather material during moult. Adult Wood Sandpipers arrive in southern Africa
between late July and November, and depart from mid-March to April.
Suspension of moult was observed in 56 birds (7.5%) after two to nine primaries
had been replaced. The remaining birds performed a continuous complete
primary moult, with average start and completion dates of 21 August and 30
December, respectively; estimated duration was 131 days. The overall rate of
production of primary feather material was uniform, achieved by growing up to
five small inner primaries simultaneously at the beginning of the moult but only
one or two simultaneously while the large outer primaries were growing.
Primary moult of adult Wood Sandpipers took longer but ended earlier than in
similar-sized waders using coastal habitats. Compared with waders using
coastal habitats, Wood Sandpipers prolonged moult by shedding their primaries
at longer intervals and by extending the growth period of each primary. The
longer primary moult and its earlier ending compared with coastal waders are
probably adaptations to Wood Sandpipers‘ use of freshwater habitats, which in
southern Africa provide unpredictable food supplies and might require nomadic
movements between ephemeral inland wetlands. | | |
| | 2009-11-03 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Pelican Methusalah | | On 30 Dec 1972 Hu Berry and a team of ringers ringed 30 Great White Pelican chicks on Bird Rock Platform, near Walvis Bay, Namibia. One of these birds, with ring H1024, has been resighted several times, once in 2003 and several times in 2009. The most recent resighting was by Mark Boorman on 1 November 2009. He spotted the pelican at the tourist jetty in Walvis Bay, a mere 12km from where it had been ringed. This pelican is 36 years and 10 months old. This is probably the greatest age for this species in the wild. Mark Boorman, who has seen this individual previously, has dubbed it as Pelican Methusalah. | | |
| | 2009-11-03 | Les Underhill | | Plumage development of Northern Lapwing chicks - results from Prypat Valley in Belarus |
There is an ADU Seminar on Wednesday 4 November in the Map Room in ADU at 13h00
Our speaker will be Lucyna Pilacka from Poland: Plumage development of Northern Lapwing chicks - results from Prypat Valley in Belarus
Lucyna is a PhD student at Avian Ecophysiology Unit at the University of
Gdansk in Poland. She is has been visiting ADU for three months within the
exchange project between ADU and AEU which is a part of the South
Africa-Poland Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology. The talk
will include a part of Lucyna‘s PhD thesis and also some impressions from
her recent fieldwork at Barberspan Bird Sanctuary in North West Province
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| | 2009-11-02 | Dieter Oschadleus | | See the Barn Swallows at Mt Moreland | | Come and celebrate the return of the swallows on Sunday 15 November 2009. Time 4 for 5.30. Bring picnic, chairs, binoculars and mozzie spray. All welcome, join us for this celebration of 3 million Barn Swallows.
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.
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| | 2009-10-22 | Les Underhill | | Presentation at the Effect of Oil on Wildlife: 10th International Conference, Tallinn, Estonia | Venessa Strauss, CEO of SANCCOB, presented a paper at 10th International Conference on the Effect of Oil on Wildlife. The conference was held in Tallinn, Estonia, from 5-9 October 2009. The presentation was co-authored by three people linked to the ADU: Jessica Kemper is an PhD graduate, Katta Ludynia is a postdoc and Jean-Paul Roux is an honorary research associate. The paper dealt with the lessons learnt from an oil spill in Namibia in April in which 160 African Penguins were oiled, transported to Cape Town and mostly released there to swim back to their colonies:
Penguins crossing borders: trans-border rehabilitation of oiled penguins from Namibia
Jessica Kemper, Venessa Strauss, Katrin Ludynia, Jean-Paul Roux, Tertius Gous
Abstract:In April 2009, oiled African Penguins were detected along the southern Namibian coast. Over 160 birds were captured by staff from the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources and underwent cleaning and treatment at the local rehabilitation centre in LĂĽderitz, Namibia. Due to the limited holding capacity of the Luderitz rehab centre, most of the birds were later transported to South Africa to be rehabilitated by SANCCOB (South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds).
129 birds were transported by truck to Cape Town, c. 1300 km south of Luderitz where they were rehabilitated by SANCCOB for over four weeks. Two birds died shortly after the trip and most of the other birds needed rehydration but birds were in an overall good condition regardless of the long transport.
Most of the birds were released in the Western Cape after successful rehabilitation, making their way home swimming back to Namibia. Birds were flipper-banded and colour marked for easier recognition and the main colonies of African penguins on the west coast of South Africa and in Namibia were monitored for returning birds.
We will report on the return of these penguins to their colonies in Namibia.
This case underlines the importance of trans-border cooperations for the rehalibitation of oiled wildlife and can be used as an example for the successful return of translocated birds by natural means.
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| | 2009-10-16 | Les Underhill | | Atlas of Seabirds at Sea | | This evening, Friday 16 October, at the BirdLife Save Our Seabirds‘ Festival, we will be launching the seabird atlas. The new project is called the Atlas of Seabirds at Sea, the acronym is AS@S, which is pronounced "ay-sass"! The website for AS@S is http://seabirds.adu.org.za. AS@S is the seabird component of SABAP2. | | |
| | 2009-10-16 | Michael Brooks | | REMINDER: ADU data processing shut down | | Just a small note to say that no data processing or updates will be made over the weekend of the 17-18 October. The last update will be run at 06h00 on Saturday morning (17th), followed by the Monday 09h00 update.
UCT is doing some work on the electrical system of the building we are in, so all the computers are going to be shut down until Monday.
Please note that all submissions made over the weekend will be queued and processed as soon as the server is up and running again. | | |
| | 2009-10-09 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Welcome to Christian Escher, University of Munich | We welcome Christian Escher, a student of the University of Munich in Germany. He is visiting Cape Town for two weeks from 7 Oct. His supervisor, Dr Alain Jacot of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, is working on variation in begging calls of colonially and solitary breeding weaver species. The aim of Christian‘s visit is to obtain recordings of chicks close to fledging (day 13 and older), and to obtain recordings of nestlings of different ages. Another PhD student, Hendrik Reers, presented data from Kenya on weaver calls at the PAOC: read abstract here
Christian will help ring weaver chicks for the project on natal dispersal, a project to see how far weaver chicks disperse after fledging. Over 250 chicks have been ringed in the last 2 months.
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| | 2009-10-05 | Les Underhill | | Welcome to Anne Voorbergen, University of Wageningen | One of the roles the ADU plays is to help with the co-supervision of MSc projects of overseas students. We welcome Anne Voorbergen, an MSc student at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Anne is tackling a project of great conservation management importance, the impact of Kelp Gulls on breeding seabirds.
Populations of Kelp Gulls 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 will do fieldwork to measure this impact, and will be based on Dyer Island. The project is designed to provide CapeNature with information they need for the conservation management of this and other offshore islands.
Anne has lots of "island experience", the most memorable being a three-month stint doing fieldwork as part of a French project doing research on Middleton Island, a speck in the ocean a long way off the coast of Alaska. | | |
| | 2009-09-25 | Les Underhill | | Paper: Mice on Southern Ocean islands | ADU Honorary Research Associate John Cooper has co-authored a paper reviewing the various impacts which House Mice have on islands in the Southern Ocean.
Angel A, Wanless RM, Cooper J (2009). Review of impacts of the introduced house mouse on islands
in the Southern Ocean: are mice equivalent to rats? Biological Invastions 11: 1743-1754.
Abstract: Research on the impacts of house mice
Mus musculus introduced to islands is patchy across
most of the species‘ global range, except on islands of
the Southern Ocean. Here we review mouse impacts
on Southern Ocean islands‘ plants, invertebrates, land
birds and seabirds, and describe the kinds of effects
that can be expected elsewhere. A key finding is that
where mice occur as part of a complex of invasive
mammals, especially other rodents, their densities
appear to be suppressed and rat-like impacts have not
been reported. Where mice are the only introduced
mammal, a greater range of native biota is impacted
and the impacts are most severe, and include the only
examples of predation on seabird eggs and chicks.
Thus mice can have devastating, irreversible and
ecosystem-changing effects on islands, impacts typically
associated with introduced rats Rattus spp.
Island restoration projects should routinely include
mouse eradication or manage mouse impacts.
If you would like a pdf, please email Les Underhill
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| | 2009-09-24 | Les Underhill | | The University of Gdansk at Barberspan | The ADU has a long history of collaboration with the Avian Ecophysiology Unit at the University of Gdansk in Poland. We are currently on our second grant in terms of the Poland-South Africa Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology.
The project compares growth rates of chicks and moult strategies of a selection of waders and plovers between the northern and southern hemispheres.
At present, a Polish team is doing fieldwork at the Barberspan Nature Reserve in North-West Province. So far they have trapped about 130 waders, including 60 Little Stints. The stints are newly arrived on migration, and are still sporting their breeding plumage. One first-year stint has been caught so far - this bird would have hatched in Siberia in July, so at the age of around two months it has already flown at least 15000 km. The Polish team consists of Professor Wlodek Meissner, leader of the project from the Polish side, Dr Kasia Zolkos and Lucyna Pilacka, for whom this fieldwork forms part of her PhD. SAFRING ringer Joel Avni has assisted with local logistics and we are grateful to him for all his input. The Polish team works closely with Sampie van der Merwe, Barberspan reserve manager, and his staff, and all of them are being trained as bird ringers (and as atlasers). The transfer of skills is a priority.
Earlier this year, Gosia Kaminska, an MSc student from the University of Gdansk, participated in fieldwork with ADU PhD student Justine Braby. | | |
| | 2009-09-16 | Les Underhill | | Website survey | | Please take the ADU websites survey. It will only take a few minutes to fill in. We want to find out the characteristics of our user community. We are especially looking for suggestions to improve our family of websites. If you don‘t take the survey the first time it pops up, you can use "take survey" on the left hand side menu anytime over the next few weeks. If you think about a suggestion some time after you have submitted your answers, you can use "suggestions" also on the left hand side menu. | | |
| | 2009-09-13 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 reaches 30% coverage |
SABAP2 reached the key milestone of 30% coverage of the 17310 pentads in the atlas region at the 21h00 update of the SABAP2 website this evening.
A year ago, coverage was on 12.6%, illustrating the fact that the project‘s momentum has increasing dramatically over the past 12 months. But it is going to be difficult to add another 17.4% to the coverage statistic in the next 12 months, because unatlased pentads are getting farther and farther away from the centres where atlasers are based.
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| | 2009-09-11 | Les Underhill | | The Hadeda Hotline |
The sixth edition of Hadeda Hotline is available. This is the newsletter of the Hadeda Ringing Project. The newsletter was compiled by Greg Duckworth, ADU MSc student investigating the reasons why the Hadeda Ibis is so successful in the Cape Peninsula. The project is led by Res Altwegg and by Doug Harebottle.
Monday 31 August 2009 marked the Hadeda Ringing Project‘s third anniversary. The first hadeda ringed was at Die Oog Bird Sanctuary in Bergvliet, Cape Town, on 31 August 2006. This chick was ringed with engraved colour ring AA. The nest is still active, in exactly the same spot, and the parents of AA are currently incubating another brood. To date 185 nestlings have been ringed with engraved rings and there have been 649 resightings. On the topic of birthdays, it was happy birthday to hadeda JL which turned one on 27 August and which has been resighted 34 times, 32 of which were by atlaser Jessie Blackshaw.
If you live in and around Cape Town, please keep a close lookout for colour ringed hadedas, and report them to special page for reporting resightings and recoveries which can also be reached from the homepage of the SAFRING website.
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| | 2009-09-10 | Les Underhill | | Metadata - ADU datasets at a glance |
A new item on the left hand side menu on the ADU homepage called "datasets at a glance" provides the "metadata" for our major projects. Metadata is like the label on the tin of jam - it provides information about the contents: what type of jam it is, what the ingredients are, who produced it, how much the jam weighs, and even the "sell by date". The ADU metadata provides summarised information about each of the ADU databases: the nature of the data, the time period it covers, how large the database is, etc. The metadata fields we have used for the projects follow a standard, internationally used format to describe a database.
You can go directly to the metadata page using this link: http://www.adu.org.za/metadata.php
The purpose of the metadata is to enable potential users of the data to assess quickly whether a particular dataset is likely to meet their needs. | | |
| | 2009-09-09 | Les Underhill | | Paper on interactions between seals and seabirds |
Azwianewi B Makhado, Mike A Meyer, Robert JM Crawford, Les G Underhill & Chris Wilke 2009.
The efficacy of culling seals seen preying on seabirds as
a means of reducing seabird mortality. African Journal of Ecology 47: 335"“340.
Abstract:
In the 2006/2007 breeding season of Cape Gannets Morus
capensis at Malgas Island, the removal of 61 Cape Fur Seals
Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus that preyed on gannet fledglings
when they left to sea significantly reduced the mortality
rate of these fledglings. However, because seals
learned to avoid the boat used for their removal, it was not
possible to remove all the seals that killed gannet fledglings
and some mortality continued. The seals inflicting the
mortality were all sub-adult males, with an average age of
<5 years. Sustained removal of these animals may reduce
this feeding behaviour, which is at present having an adverse
impact on several threatened seabirds in the
Benguela ecosystem.
Newi Makhado has recently completed his PhD at the ADU, and a pdf of the paper is available from him at amakhado@deat.gov.za. | | |
| | 2009-08-31 | Les Underhill | | Sophie Kohler‘s presentation wins prize at WIOMSA | | Sophie Kohler‘s presentation won the prize for best student poster at the WIOMSA (Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association) Scientific Symposium last week (see two items below for full details). | | |
| | 2009-08-12 | Les Underhill | | Climate change and dwarf chameleons |
Darren Houniet was an MSc student of the Animal Demography Unit, graduating last year. He was based at SANBI, where he was supervised by Dr Krystal Tolley, and his research project dealt with Dwarf Chameleons. The first of the resulting papers is hot off the press.
Houniet DT, Thuiller W, Tolley KA 2009. Potential effects of predicted climate change on the endemic South African Dwarf Chameleons, Bradypodion. African Journal of Herpetology 58: 28-35.
The niche concept implies that a relationship exists between a species and its environment, while macro-ecological theory suggests that an important attribute of a species‘ environment is climate. Thus, changes in climate could affect individual species, but also communities. Here, we analysed the potential impacts of climate change on dwarf chameleons. A niche-based modelling technique was used to predict current suitable climatic habitat for most Bradypodion species and for their phylogenetic clades. Additionally, the models were projected into the future (2080) using the IPCC climate change scenarios. All models for Bradypodion species and clades showed responses to predicted climate change, however, the degree and extent of these responses were individualistic. Most species responded with a contraction in predicated climatic suitability, but some registered an expansion or a shift. These results have important implications in understanding the vulnerability of biodiversity to climate change, and for the importance of considering the effects of predicted climatic shifts on the protection of biodiversity.
The pdf is available from Les Underhill
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| | 2009-08-12 | Les Underhill | | Magda Remisiewicz presentation at the European Ornithologists‘ Union meeting in Switzerland | Magda Remisiewicz, one of the post-docs in the ADU, is taking part in the Seventh Congress
of the European Ornithologists‘ Union, which will be held at the
University of Zurich, Switzerland, from 21-26 August 2009. Magda is
presenting the results of studies of the primary moult of Wood Sandpipers and other
waders in southern Africa during the symposium What are the
non-breeding causes of Palearctic-African migrant declines? Ecological
studies of migrants in Africa.
Madga‘s presentation is entitled Extended moult as an adaptation of waders to the use of ephemeral freshwater habitats at their wintering grounds and her co-authors are
Tony Tree, Les Underhill, Ania Gustowska and Barry Taylor.
Contrasts in life histories and consequentional attributes such as population sizes, genetic variability and immunocompetence have been shown between waders using freshwater and marine habitats. We verify the hypothesis that moult strategy, an important part of life-cycle and migration strategy, differs between waders using these two habitats in the wintering season. We predict that waders using irregular freshwater wetlands that provide unpredictable food resources would need a more flexible moult strategy than waders relying on the abundant and predictable food supplies of coastal habitats. We compare attributes of primary moult in adult birds in southern Africa among Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola, which exclusively use freshwater habitats; Little Stints Calidris minuta, which use freshwater and coastal habitats; and Knots Calidris canutus, Sanderlings Calidris alba, Ruddy Turnstones Arenaria interpres and Grey Plovers Pluvialis squatarola, which use mostly coastal marine habitats (literature data). We analysed moult cards from 1496 adult Wood Sandpipers collected in 1900"“2008, for Little Stints moult cards from 1851 adults collected in 1966"“2008, for the remaining species we used data from literature. For all these species the parameters of moult were estimated with the Underhill-Zucchini model (1988). We plotted the moult durations of these species against their mean wing lengths. Populations that used freshwater habitats had a more extended primary moult, achieved by the slower growth of each primary and longer inter-shedding intervals than similar-sized waders using coastal habitats. We consider this extended moult to be an adaptation to the use of irregular wetlands that provide unpredictable food resources and to the birds‘ need to move between ephemeral water bodies while staging at their wintering grounds. These irregular wetlands to which these waders are adapted are under increased threat because of climate change, new farming practices and increasing demand for their water by man.
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| | 2009-08-02 | Les Underhill | | News from last weekend‘s CAR survey |
Donella Young, the CAR project coordinator, reports ...
CAR latest news on 25th July 2009 winter count
I would like to extend a big thank you to all CAR route leaders and assisting observers for all their time and birding skills and their willingness to cover petrol costs for the recent CAR winter count. I really appreciate your extra effort in filling in the route description form this count as this information will be particularly useful to Sally Hofmeyr in interpreting the CAR results for her PhD research. Thankfully it was a beautiful clear day throughout the country, although very cold in the early morning, especially in the Free State and Eastern Cape. In the Free State Brian Colahan, Ornithologist for the Free State Tourism, Environment and Economic Affairs who coordinates over 100 routes, reported that many farm dams were iced over. There was snow on the higher ground in the Eastern Cape. Even in the Swartland it was 0 degrees C with heavy frost as we were driving out to our route.
Some highlights have already come to my attention as CAR roadcount forms begin to come in. Sylvia Ledgard, a member of the Cape Bird Club, reported the highest count of Blue Cranes (385) on their route, SW03, in the Swartland. Elna Slabber, the Precinct Organiser who farms in the area, recorded their highest total too (190 Blue Cranes) on SW13. CAR has recorded a four-fold increase in this species in this region since monitoring began in 1996. In the Overberg John Carter, a member of the Somerset West Bird Club, had the phenomenal total of 40 Denham‘s Bustards on OV05. Up in Mpumalanga John and Anita Meiring saw a pair of Secretarybirds on their route in Steenkampsberg for the first time. In the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Evelyn Hughes saw a flock of 51 Grey Crowned Cranes which is very encouraging.
Jan Makampies, Nature Conservator of Onteniqua Nature Reserve, together with Bob James and Kerry Hampson enjoyed taking a group of children from Denneprag and Brandwacht Primary Schools on their count of route WU07, and followed this up with a game count.
Roadcount forms from 350 routes will flood in over the next weeks and I will post a website report on the CAR webpage in mid-September. The results will be distributed in the next newsletter early in December once they are all captured. Thank you to all the Precinct Organisers who are gathering these forms in now and checking them!
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| | 2009-07-24 | Les Underhill | | Digital Biodiversity, Citizen Science, Statistical Ecology |
The business of the ADU can be summarized in three phrases: Digital Biodiversity, Citizen Science, Statistical Ecology.
This is the theme of the ADU page in the current issue of Africa - Birds & Birding.
We start by planning projects, such as BIRP, CAR, CWAC, SABAP2, SABCA, SAFRING and SARCA. An essential part of the planning is designing the digital database for these biodiversity project; hence one of our core themes is digital biodiversity. Most of the data that go into these databases are collected by citizen scientists, members of the public whose knowledge of birds (or butterflies or reptiles) is supplemented by training in how to participate. We then have the responsibility to our citizen scientists of doing the best possible statistical analysis of the data so that, ultimately, it gets translated into policy recommendations. This requires that our core academic skill is a statistical ecology, a new discipline that puts statistics into biology and biology into statistics.
Read the ADU page for the full story. | | |
| | 2009-07-20 | Les Underhill | | Using seabirds as indicators of the marine environment |
Rob Crawford, one of the ADU‘s Honorary Research Associates, is co-author of a newly published review paper:
JM Durant, DO Hjermann, M Frederiksen, JB Charrassin, Y Le Maho,
PS Sabarros, RJM Crawford, NChr Stenseth 2009. Pros and cons of using seabirds as ecological
indicators. Climate Research 39: 115-129.
ABSTRACT: Climate change and overfishing are increasingly causing unanticipated changes in
marine ecosystems (e.g. shifts in species dominance). In order to understand and anticipate these
changes, there is a crucial need for indicators that summarise large quantities of information into a few relevant and accessible signals. Seabirds have been suggested as good candidates for ecological indicators of the marine environment; however, few studies have critically evaluated their value as such. We review the role of seabirds as ecological indicators, and discuss their limitations and drawbacks, as compared to other types of indicators. In addition, we highlight the statistical consequences of inverse inference when using seabird data as indicators. We discuss the use of integrated indices and the use of seabirds as autonomous samplers of the marine environment. Finally, we highlight the necessary steps preceding the use of seabirds as indicators. We conclude that, in order to use seabird time series properly, the use of recent advances both in statistics and in remote sensing is a way to move forward. This, along with the assessment of their usefulness, should enable us to use seabird indicators appropriately for managing urgent conservation problems.
You can get a pdf from Les Underhill. | | |
| | 2009-07-18 | Les Underhill | | Sixth paper at ZSSA | | There are actually six ADU papers at the Zoological Society of Southern Africa‘s conference! MSc student Mdu Seakamela is presenting Calibrating effects of technological creep on the perceived pup trends of the Cape Fur Seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus). Through time, the quality of the photographic techniques to count seal pups at colonies has improved, with the change from black and white film to digital colour being the largest. By using both methods at a sample of colonies, Mdu has developed calibration tools. | | |
| | 2009-07-17 | Les Underhill | | Conference of the Zoological Society of Southern Africa |
The 50th Anniversary Conference of the Zoological Society of Southern Africa takes place at Natalia, Illovo Beach, KwaZulu-Natal, from 21-25 July 2009.
There are five ADU presentations:
PhD student Sally Hofmeyr is analysing the huge database of the ADU‘s CAR project:
What the CAR project can tell us about bustard and korhaan populations in South Africa.
Steve Kirkman is also a PhD student, researching the ecology of the Cape Fur Seal through its range in South Africa and Namibia: Distribution shifts of the Cape fur seal Arctocephalus pusillus
pusillus "“ density dependence, prey shifts or disturbance?
Three of the ADU project coordinators will do presentations on their projects.
Doug Harebottle heads up SABAP2: The second Southern African Bird Atlas Project: protocols and conservation outcomes.
Silvia Mecenero is in charge of the butterfly atlas SABCA: The Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment (SABCA): Flying for two years.
Dieter Oschadleus is the bird ringing coordinator at SAFRING: Ringing effort in South Africa (1950"“2009) reveals avian range changes. | | |
| | 2009-07-16 | Les Underhill | | Two new penguins papers | The latest issue of Ostrich has two papers on the African Penguin with ADU authors.
Hampton SL, Ryan PG, Underhill LG 2009. The effect of flipper banding on the breeding success of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus at Boulders Beach, South Africa. Ostrich 80: 77-80.
Underhill LG, Sherley RB, Dyer BM, Crawford RJM 2009. Interactions between snakes and seabirds on Robben, Schaapen and Meeuw Islands, Western Cape Province, South Africa. Ostrich 80: 115-118.
The first paper was part of Shannon Hampton‘s MSc - the headline finding was that we could find no difference in breeding success between penguins that were and were not flipper banded. The leading incident in the second paper is an attempted "attack" by a Mole Snake on an African Penguin nest on Robben Island - the penguins repelled the snake, which seemed pretty lucky to get away unscathed. | | |
| | 2009-07-16 | Les Underhill | | Scientific name of the Red-headed Weaver |
Dieter Oschadleus, in a short note in the new Ostrich, shows that the scientific name of the Red-headed Weaver is Anaplectes rubriceps (and not Anaplectes melanotis):
Oschadleus HD 2009. Correct name of the Red-headed Weaver Anaplectes rubriceps. Ostrich 80: 121-122.
Dieter is head of SAFRING, and his main research interest is in the weavers. | | |
| | 2009-07-12 | Les Underhill | | Visit by Dr Christoph Schwitzer, Bristol Zoo, for the "Penguin Bolstering Project" | | Dr Christoph Schwitzer is Head of Research at Bristol Zoo. He visited Cape Town to participate in discussions for a penguin bolstering project whereby zoos in Europe, lead by Bristol Zoo, provide resources which enable us to hand-rear penguin chicks which have been abandoned by their parents. We know that intervention works because earlier research, particularly that done by ADU PhD graduate Phil Whittingon, who had a chapter which demonstrated that hand-reared chicks ultimately return to breed as well as parent-reared chicks. Christoph‘s own PhD is from the University of Cologne in Germany, and he did a study of the Blue-eyed Black Lemur in Madagascar, and it sounded a pretty adventurous PhD. He is now Secretary of the Board of AEECL, The Lemur Conservation Association, and is actively involved with Programme Sahamalaza, the setting up of a new national park in Madagascar. | | |
| | 2009-07-09 | Les Underhill | | Conservation status of Northern Rockhopper Penguins at Tristan and Gough |
John Cooper of the ADU is a co-author of a new paper dealing with the alarming declines in the population of Northern Rockhopper Penguins at Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island. It seems that the factors driving these declines are occurring both at sea and on land, but that the unknown factors at sea are the more important. The paper suggests that the threat category for this newly recognized species is "Endangered".
The full reference for the paper is "Population trends and conservation status of the Northern Rockhopper Penguin Eudyptes moseleyi at Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island" by
Richard Cuthbert, John Cooper, Marie-Helene Burle, Conrad J. Glass, James P. Glass, Simon Glass, Trevor Glass, Geoff M. Hilton, Erica S. Sommer, Ross M. Wanless and Peter G. Ryan, in Bird Conservation International (2009) 19: 109-120.
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| | 2009-07-07 | Les Underhill | | Biodiversity Informatics Workshop in Costa Rica |
Two members of the ADU involved with SARCA, the reptile atlas, have been invited to participate in a workshop Sharing the Experiences and Using Biodiversity Information Management Systems in the Developing World: the INBIo experience. The workshop will be held at the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica (INBio), in Santo Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica, from 13-19 July.
Marienne de Villiers and Rene Navarro are the ADU representatives at the workshop. The overall goal of the programme is to build capacity by discussing the key issues involved in designing and implementing Biodiversity Information Management Systems in developing countries. Another goal is to establish partnerships to address the challenges and opportunities.
The ADU is greatly honoured by the invitation, which will help expand our skills in our core areas: digital biodiversity, citizen science and statistical ecology. In Costa Rica, citizen scientists are described as parataxonomists (assisting taxonomists, in the same was as paramedics assist medical professionals).
We are grateful to the JRS Foundation for sponsoring the attendance of Marienne and Rene at the workshop. | | |
| | 2009-07-07 | Les Underhill | | SABCA presentation at the confernce of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa | Silvia Mecenero, who heads up SABCA, presented a paper on The Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment (SABCA): Two years on at the annual conference of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa this week.
SABCA‘s main activity is to create a comprehensive database of the roughly 500 000 records of butterflies in museums and private collections. Field surveys are also been conducted around South Africa, with surveys prioritised to gaps. SABCA has an online virtual museum for the submission of butterfly photographs by the public. About 6 000 photographs have been received, including records of rare and endangered species, new localities and evidence of range expansions. Data will be used to conduct species assessments according to the IUCN criteria. An updated butterfly Red Data Book and Atlas will be produced, with distribution maps for each species.
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| | 2009-07-06 | Les Underhill | | Justine Braby‘s MSc upgraded to PhD | Justine Braby‘s MSc has just been upgraded to a PhD. Justine‘s PhD project is entitled The Biology and Conservation of the Damara Tern Sterna balaenarum.
Justine was registered for an MSc in 2007 and 2008, and she has already done extensive fieldwork in the Sperrgebiet. The project was originally designed to examine the impact of diamond mining on the terns, but has grown into a full-scale examination of the biology and conservation needs of the Damara Tern. There are 44 tern species in the world; seven of these are tiny, and the Damara Tern is arguably the tiniest of them all.
Her PhD is supported by the National Research Foundation and NAMDEB. | | |
| | 2009-07-05 | Les Underhill | | Dr Antje Steinfurth, Postdoctoral Fellow in the ADU |
We welcome Dr Antje Steinfurth as a postdoctoral fellow in the Animal Demography Unit. Antje will strengthen the team doing research relevant to the conservation of the African Penguin.
Antje‘s was awarded her PhD in 2007 having been based at the Institute of Polar Ecology at the University of Kiel in Germany. Given the polar focus of the institute, it is remarkable that Antje did her fieldwork on the equator, in the Galapagos Islands, doing research on the Galapagos Penguin. Her PhD is entitled Marine Ecology and Conservation of the Galapagos Penguin, Spheniscus mendiculus.
Antje has done research on the four species of Spheniscus penguins, Galapagos, Magellanic, Humboldt and African.
Her postdoc is supported by the National Research Foundation. | | |
| | 2009-07-04 | Les Underhill | | Newsletter 9 of the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment | | The latest SABCA newsletter has details of the the butterfly atlas‘s new Virtual Museum competition, and contains lots of other fascinating information.
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| | 2009-07-03 | Les Underhill | | SABCA evening, Botanical Gardens, Pietermaritzburg, 17 July 2009 |
SABCA is the Southern African Butterfly Atlas Project.
The Lepidopterists‘ Society of Africa is hosting a SABCA evening at the Pietermaritzburg Botanical Gardens, starting at 18h30 on 17 July, as part of LepSoc‘s annual conference and AGM. Silvia Mecenero, SABCA project coordinator, will give an update on SABCA. A butterfly slide show presented by Steve Woodhall, author of the most recent field guide to SA‘s butterflies, will be included in the evening, featuring photos from the SABCA virtual museum. Moth enthusiast Hermann Staude will talk about moth records received via SABCA. Please come along and join us for this most informative and fun evening! For more info, please visit LepSoc‘s website. | | |
| | 2009-07-01 | Marius Wheeler | | New BIRP Website | I am delighted to "śopen"ť 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.
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| | 2009-06-30 | Les Underhill | | One million records for SABAP2 |
SABAP2, the new bird atlas project, reached one million record of bird distribution today. Today also marks the completion of the first two years of SABAP2 fieldwork. 27% of the 17310 pentads in the pentads in the atlas region have at least one visit. Details are on the SABAP2 website. | | |
| | 2009-06-22 | Les Underhill | | SAFRING conference and BirdLife South Africa AGM, March 2010 | | Please save the dates 12-15 March 2010 for the next SAFRING conference, to be held at Barberspan Nature Reserve in North-West Province. Please save the long weekend 19-22 March 2010 for the BirdLife South African annual general meeting, to be held at Wakkerstroom. The ADU staff and students participating in the Barberspan conference will stay on for the AGM weekend and will be available in the week between the two events to talk at bird club meetings, to present seminars, etc.
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| | 2009-06-19 | Les Underhill | | Great White Pelican genetics unravelled | PhD student Marta de Ponte is lead author of a paper in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Genetics:
de Ponte Machado M, Feldheim KA, Sellas AB, Bowie RCK 2009. Development and characterization of microsatellite loci from the Great White Pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) and widespread
application to other members of the Pelecanidae. Conservation Genetics 10: 1033-1036.
The results of this paper will have broad utility for phylogeographic and demographic studies in all
eight of the world‘s pelican species. Marta is applying the methods developed here to the Great White Pelican, her study species, to ascertain the extent of gene flow between the three colonies in southern Africa. | | |
| | 2009-06-11 | Les Underhill | | AFRING |
We encourage you to have a look at the website of the African Bird Ringing Scheme (AFRING). AFRING is an ongoing initiative aiming to improve the coordination and quality of waterbird ringing programmes within Africa. It focuses on capacity building, establishing regional cooperation and encouraging use of scientific data for bird and wetland conservation.
At the first meeting of the Parties to the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) held in Somerset West in 1999, the importance of developing an African ringing scheme was identified as a priority project. With start-up funding from AEWA, AFRING was born in January 2004. Two further project phases were funded by the AEWA Secretariat through voluntary contributions from the EU.
Based at the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town, the focus of AFRING is initially on waterbirds but this will shift to include all African bird species. Activities have focused on training and awareness raising, and creating an information technology platform.
Over the past five years, AFRING and its partners have conducted four training workshops in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Zambia, trained almost 50 African ringers, established a centralized database system for African ringing data and set policies for the future of the organization.
With a foundation now laid, AFRING is well set to further strengthen the bird ringing and conservation networks within Africa and around the world. New programmes, initiatives and projects will be developed into the future to continue carrying the message of the important role that bird ringing plays in bird and biodiversity conservation.
One such initiative is the establishment of the AFRING website which aims to provide an improved source of information and resources to the African and global ringing community. One of the main features of the site, which was developed during the third project phase in 2008, is that it provides an efficient mechanism to report a recovered ring on-line, an important aspect in an African context and for subsequent data analyses.
Information about ringing courses, research opportunities and links to other related sites will be featured on the site which will be updated and improved on a regular basis.
There is a full report on the AEWA website.
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| | 2009-06-10 | Les Underhill | | Presentation at e-Biosphere09 Conference, London, 1-4 June 2009 |
Rene Navarro atttended the e-Biosphere09 Conference in London, from 1-4 June 2009, where he presented an ADU poster entitled Online virtual museum and conservation assessment database of the reptiles of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland.
South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland have a high diversity of reptiles: approximately five times the number of species that would be expected based on land area, with over one-third of species endemic to the region.
Yet reptiles are traditionally overlooked in conservation plans - partly because of a shortage of resources for adequate monitoring, but also because of the poor public image of reptiles.
The Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment has addressed these issues through an online Virtual Museum (VM), developed in-house with open source software. Photographs of reptiles are submitted by the public via email, along with basic information in a simple format. Submissions are processed, locality information verified and photos edited, before uploading. Identifications are made by a panel of experts. VM records feed into a larger database of reptile distribution records, compiled from museum and other collections and from published literature. Real-time distribution maps are available online.
The VM has helped to raise public awareness and appreciation of reptiles, and has supplied valuable records that would not otherwise have been available. The VM concept has been adopted by the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment.
Besides Rene, the poster was co-authored by Marienne de Villiers and Marius Burger. | | |
| | 2009-06-05 | Les Underhill | | Wildfires in the Cape Floristic Region - MSc thesis | Congratulations to Diane Southey, whose thesis Wildfires in the Cape Floristic Region: Exploring vegetation and weather as drivers of fire frequency has just been examined - she will graduaute with an MSc with distinction next Friday. The thesis was supervised by Professor William Bond, in the Department of Botany at UCT, Dr Guy Midgley at SANBI, and by me in the ADU.
The thesis makes a major contribution to our understanding of fire in the fynbos. A remarkable insight was the discovery of a clear association between fire events and synoptic states (ie the weather pressure maps) - this has potential to revolutionize the way daily risks of fire are assessed. Alarming too is the finding that the average fire return period (the average time between two successive fires at a point) has decreased. For example, in the Cedarberg, the fire return period decreased from 14 years in 1970 to 7 years in 2000, from 13 years in the Hottentots-Holland in 1970 to 6 years in 2000, and from 19 years in Outeniqua in 1970 to 9 years in 2000.
Well done, Diane | | |
| | 2009-06-04 | Marius Wheeler | | It is CWAC Season!! | 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. | | |
| | 2009-05-27 | Les Underhill | | Five ADU papers in issue 31(1) of African Journal of Marine Science |
The forthcoming issue of the African Journal of Marine Science (vol 31 no 1, 2009) contains papers by PhD student Steve Kirkman, by PhD graduates Anton Wolfaardt, Samantha Petersen and Phil Whittington, by honorary research associates Rob Crawford and Tony Williams, and by ADU Director Les Underhill:
Evaluating seal-seabird interactions in southern Africa: a critical review.
SP Kirkman.
View Abstract
Comparison of moult phenology of African Penguins Spheniscus demersus at Robben and Dassen islands.
AC Wolfaardt, LG Underhill and RJM Crawford.
View Abstract
Review of the rescue, rehabilitation and restoration of oiled seabirds in South Africa, especially African Penguins Spheniscus demersus and Cape Gannets Morus capensis, 1983-2005.
AC Wolfaardt, AJ Williams, LG Underhill, RJM Crawford and PA Whittington.
View Abstract
Sightings of Killer Whales Orcinus orca from longline vessels in South African waters, and consideration of the regional conservation status.
AJ Williams, SL Petersen, M Goren and BP Watkins.
View Abstract
Turtle bycatch in the pelagic longline fishery off southern Africa.
SL Petersen, MB Honig, PG Ryan, R Nel and LG Underhill.
View Abstract
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| | 2009-05-26 | Les Underhill | | Trends in crane populations in agricultural landscapes in South Africa | | The latest issue of Indwa, the journal of the South African Crane Working Group of EWT, contains a paper by Donella Young which reports results from the Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts (CAR) project: Young DJ (2008) Trends in populations of Blue Cranes Antropoides paradiseus, Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum and Wattled Crane Bugeranus carunculatus within agricultural regions in South Africa. Indwa 6: 23-33. | | |
| | 2009-05-20 | Les Underhill | | Conference Presentation in Cananda "Dassen Island, South Africa: An overview of marine resource extraction based on historical archives c. 1840-1950" |
Tomorrow, PhD student Adin Stamelman leaves for Canada to attend the "Oceans Past II" conference, with theme "Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the History and Future of Marine Animal Populations Conference". Adin is cosupervised between Historical Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and the Animal Demography Unit in the Faculty of Science. His paper is titled "Dassen Island, South Africa: An Overview of Marine Resource Extraction based on Historical Archives c. 1840-1950", and the abstract follows.
This paper discusses data gleaned from the Cape Colonial and South African National Archives regarding marine resource use and extraction from Dassen Island. An iconic "Guano Island", Dassen lies approximately 80km north of Table Bay and 12km out to sea, off the coast of the fishing village of Yzerfontein. Visited and settled from the time of the Dutch colonists (circa 1600‘s) and actively managed as a source of guano (for fertilizer) from the 1840‘s, Dassen Island has a rich and previously untapped archival record. Perusal of these archives elucidates patterns of resource use and extraction that both post World War II baseline data (for SA fishery management and marine biologists) as well as subsequent marine research fails to appreciate. This paper shows that two activities in particular, namely; penguin-egg collection and the capture of penguins for sealing-bait are vastly underappreciated or completely absent from the secondary literature. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that a close reading of the archives reveals not just narrative (qualitative) and statistical (quantitative) data but a wealth of proxy data too. By examining the data for numerous ‘Guano Islands‘ this proxy data can be used to better appreciate human impacts, as well as offer a one hundred year shift of baseline demographic data for a number of key marine species. This paper concludes with a brief discussion of the challenges involved in ‘historicising the ocean,‘ as well as the process of making the archival records discussed available to a wider audience through digitisation. | | |
| | 2009-04-29 | Les Underhill | | Sanderling review published |
Reneerkens, J., Benhoussa, A., Boland, H., Collier, M., Grond, K., GĂĽnther, K., Hallgrimsson, G.T., Hansen, J., Meissner, W., de Meulenaer, B., Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y., Piersma, T., Poot, M., van Roomen, M., Summers, R.W., Tomkovich, P.S. & Underhill, L.G. 2009. Sanderlings using African"“Eurasian flyways: a review of current knowledge. Wader Study Group Bull. 116(1): 2"“20.
Despite the worldwide occurrence of Sanderlings Calidris alba on popular beaches, strikingly little is known about their biology compared to other common waders. Here we review the limited available knowledge of Sanderlings that use African"“Eurasian flyways. The basis for this review was a workshop on Sanderlings, held during the International Wader Study Group conference in JastrzÄ™bia GĂłra, Poland in 2008. We focus on biogeography, trends, numbers, diet, migration patterns and reproduction. Gaps in our knowledge are identified and we discuss the evidence for a Siberian origin of Sanderlings wintering in NW Europe, and plead for more non-estuarine surveys and collaboration between colour-ring projects both in space and time to get a better understanding of population dynamics and migration phenology.
The pdf is available from Les Underhill les.underhill@uct.ac.za
This publication launches a new project of the International Wader Study Group. Full details are on the Sanderling Project website, http://www.waderstudygroup.org/res/project/sanderling.php
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| | 2009-04-28 | Les Underhill | | The efficacy of culling seals seen preying on seabirds as a means of reducing seabird mortality | New paper published online.
The lead author is Newi Makhado, PhD student in the ADU.
Azwianewi B. Makhado, Mike A. Meyer, Robert J. M. Crawford, Les G. Underhill, Chris Wilke. 2009. The efficacy of culling seals seen preying on seabirds as a means of reducing seabird mortality. African Journal of Ecology.
The paper was published online on 23 April 2009.
doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2008.00966.x
The pdf is available from Newi, amakhado@deat.gov.za. | | |
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