UCT Open Access Journals (Univ. of Cape Town)
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Notes on Red-billed Firefinch Lagonosticta senegala breeding in central Namibia
Get PDFDuring January 2010 two pairs of Red-billed Firefinch constructing nests in a residential garden in Windhoek
Apparent North-West range extension of Blue Cranes in South Africa
Get PDFThis note describes two observations indicating an apparent range extension northwestwards in South Africa
Play in birds - African Darter
Get PDFwe were amazed to see a juvenile African Darter apparently playing with a small stick. The bird was throwing it up into the air and catching it in its bill. The bird to find this an absorbing activity and repeated the process over and over again
Birds occurring or breeding at Robben Island, South Africa, since 2000
Get PDFRobben Island, Western Cape, is an Important Bird Area because it provides breeding habitat for several threatened marine and coastal species. The island's first comprehensive bird list was assembled in 2000, but since that time 21 new species have been recorded on the island and breeding has been confirmed for five species for the first time. This paper provides an updated list of all 164 species that have occurred on the island and notes on the status of the 1 that have been seen since 1 January 2000
Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus in the Fish River Canyon, Namibia
Get PDFOne sighting of an adult Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus was recorded in the Fish River at approximately 27°45'17.52992''S, 17°35'26.1402''E, within the Fish River Canyon National Park, Namibia. The pelican was seen at 09:30 on the morning of 18 August 2010. It was settled on a large stagnant pool in the river approximately 27km directly north of the Ais-Ais Rest Camp, and upstream from the confluence with the Kanebis River
Chestnut Weaver Ploceus rubiginosus, a brand new visitor to South Africa
Get PDFOn the morning of 9 January 2011, my husband and I started a SABAP2 atlas survey. We were very surprised by the number of birds recorded, especially after recording the first sighting of a Hadeda Ibis Bostrychia hagedash at Nossob. Abdim Storks Ciconia abdimii were everywhere and the numbers of species recorded increased rapidly if you compare with what we usually encounter. Later in the morning we were editing photos, but at the same time listening and observing our birdbath in the garden. A Brubru Nilaus afer called and both of us went around to look at the bird. To our surprise we saw a very different bird in the Acacia next to our bedroom window - a Chestnut Weaver Ploceus rubiginosus male, in full breeding plumage
Reporting rate comparisons for birds in the Nelspruit area – SABAP1 vs SABAP2
No full textThe second Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) is now in its fourth year. It started approximately 15 years after the first bird atlas project (SABAP1) has ended. Although the methodology of data collection differs significantly between these two projects, the data can still be compared with some degree of accuracy. In this paper data from the two projects will be compared for the Nelspruit area in Mpumalanga. At the time of writing the same number of data cards had been submitted for the Nelspruit quarter degree grid cell (QDGC) 2530BD for both projects, viz 215
Additional evidence of Great White Pelican Pelecanus onocrotalus in the Fish River Canyon, Namibia
Get PDFHere, we report additional evidence of Great White Pelican in the Fish River Canyon National Park, Namibia - a sighting of a pelican carcass on 2 June 2010. Our sighting was 11 weeks prior to that of Bester et al (2011), and the carcass was approximately 15 km north of their sighting, 3 km north of the Palm Springs on the Fish River Canyon hiking trail
Avian nest predation: do birds get away with murder?
Get PDFOver many years of field observations on the breeding biology of birds, I have observed several incidences of predation on eggs and nestlings by birds. Some of these predation events caused sufficient damage to the nest to mistakenly categorize it as damage caused by a mammalian predator
Fortieth anniversary conference of the International Wader Study Group: the African contribution
Get PDFThe International Wader Study Group (IWSG) (http://www.waderstudygroup.org), founded in the United Kingdom in 1970 as the Wader Study Group, held its 40th anniversary conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on the weekend 2 to 5 October 2010. Several of the founding members were present, and the original instigator, Clive Minton, traced the early history and development of the group. From its roots as a network of British groups of mainly amateur wader ringers, the centre of gravity of membership has crossed the North Sea to continental Europe, and it has mixed membership of both professionals and amateurs with an interest in shorebirds. The IWSG mounts an annual conference, with the past dozen conferences being scattered across Europe, in France (twice), England, the Netherlands (twice), Poland (twice), Hungary, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, and the 2011 conference is scheduled for the weekend /24-26 September in Inverness, Scotland. These events are characterized by excellence in three spheres: science, conservation and fun