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Please Help Establish Autumn Timing

15 February 2010 - 31 May 2010

Next week, 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 Southern 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).

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.

This is the comparison map for the Southern Grey-headed Sparrow, highlighting differences between SABAP1 and SABAP2. The pentad data for SABAP2 have been amalgamated to form quarter degree grid cell distribution maps for easy comparison with SABAP1. The colours BLUE and GREEN denote quarter degree grid cells (QDGCs) where the species seems to be more abundant than in SABAP1. GREEN indicates that the SABAP2 reporting rate is greater than the SABAP1 reporting rate. BLUE indicates QDGCs where the species was not recorded in SABAP1 but has been recorded in SABAP2. RED and ORANGE indicate QDGCs where the species might be less abundant. ORANGE indicates that the SABAP2 reporting rate is smaller than the SABAP1 reporting rate, and YELLOW indicates that both reporting rates are equal. RED indicates that the species was recorded in SABAP1 but has not been recorded on SABAP2 checklists already received for the QDGC; the RED QDGCs are suggestive that the species might have disappeared from the area. Finally, PINK indicates QDGCs where the species occurred in SABAP1, but for which we do not yet have any SABAP2 data, and where we would dearly love atlasers to go and do fieldwork.

Over the eastern half of the atlas region, the overwhelming dominance of GREEN suggests that the Southern Grey-headed Sparrow has become more abundant in the areas in which it occurred at the time of SABAP1. It has also expanded its range westward, along the Garden Route and the Overberg into the Cape Peninusula.

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

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

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

The next SABAP2 workshop is in Port Elizabeth on Saturday 27 March 2010. The coverage of pentads in the Eastern Cape has lagged behind most of the other provinces, and we are really keen to recruit and train atlasers in this area. So, if you live anywhere close to Port Elizabeth, and want to find out more about the project please consider attending. You will learn both why the project is important and also how to go about fieldwork, and how to do data capture and submission.

The workshop will be held at the Walmer Library, Main Road, Walmer. The workshop will start at 08h30 and will end at the latest at 12h30. If you have a laptop, please bring it with you and we will help you to load the SABAP2 software, etc, onto it for you.

The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.

Coffee/tea will be provided free of charge.

Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Gerrie Horn at gerriehorn@gmail.com or phone him on 0824438834 or 0413740373