DeJaVUDeJaVU is dé jà vu ("the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a situation previously") because it is identical to last summer's BASH. Well almost identical. It is SABAP2's communal project for December and January, exploiting the atlasing opportunities presented when lots of us are able to travel far and wide on summer holiday.
In the same way as LAMP and WHAMB were, in the first place, unashamedly deep, so DeJaVU's first priority is to be provacatively wide.
The objective of LAMP and WHAMB was to get lots of repeat data for pentads, because this is the best way to quantify departure and arrival.
The first objective of DeJaVU is to document the distributions of as many species as possible, as comprehensively as possible, throughout the SABAP2 region, in midsummer 2009/10. So the primary focus is to get as many pentads visited (or revisited) as possible.
At the same time, we want to have lot of repeat visits to pentads. Diligently conducted repeat checklists, carefully following the protocol, are invaluable for developing an index of abundance for each species this summer. So we are also very happy if atlasers go deep this summer, and we have set some deep targets too.
We want to get 80% of the people who have ever contributed to SABAP2 out into the field for DeJaVU. So the target number of observers will be 500.
We will try to visit 15% of the 17310 pentads in the SABAP2 region – that's a target of 2600 pentads. That is equivalent to visiting half the pentads that have been visited since the start of the project.
We would like 600 of those pentads to be new pentads. That is more than two Gautengs – in fact it is 2.2 Gautengs.
The target number of checklists for December and January is 4000, or 2000 per month. The largest number of checklists that has ever been submitted for a single month is approaching 1600, so this is a formidable challenge. We'd like the average list length to be long – around 55 species, so that gives a target of 220000 records in the two months.
Although the emphasis in DeJaVU is going wide, we also want to set some simple deep targets too: 100 pentads with more than five checklists and 25 pentads with more than 10 checklists.
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| 2010-02-08 | Les Underhill | | Gauteng is gold or better | In the past hour, Craig Whittington-Jones has submitted a checklist for pentad 2620_2805, a bit south of Johannesburg. This wipes out the last YELLOW pentad in Gauteng. This means that every one of the 271 pentads classified as being part of Gauteng have two or more checklists. So the whole of Gauteng is now ORANGE or darker.
The next target is to make Gauteng the GREEN province (four plus checklists per pentad), and then to move on to DARK GREEN (seven plus checklists). Already 125 (46%) of Gauteng's pentads are DARK GREEN. This in depth coverage of Gauteng will help us demonstrate the value of atlasing as a long-term monitoring tool for measuring changes in bird distribution through time.
Meanwhile, atlasers throughout the atlas region are also going wide, and the rate at which new pentads are being covered remains steady, at just over six per day. This is in spite of the fact that new pentads are getting farther and farther away from most atlasers.
Well done, Team SABAP2, both for going DEEP and for going WIDE.
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| | 2010-02-06 | Les Underhill | | 35 years of Langebaan Lagoon counts |
In 1974, Ron Summers arrived as a postdoc to study waders at Langebaan Lagoon. He was from Dundee and a member of the Tay Ringing Group. He brought with him this crazy Scottish idea that waders should not only be ringed, they should also be counted. Starting with a midwinter count in June 1975, he persuaded the members of the Western Cape Wader Study Group to attempt a complete census of all the waders (and other waterbirds) at Langebaan Lagoon. It took a while to work out the best strategy for dividing the lagoon into sections that could be covered on foot in about three hours each. Currently, the lagoon is divided into 10 count sections.
The CWAC count at Langebaan Lagoon today marked the completion of 35 years of midsummer and midwinter surveys of all the waterbirds at Langebaan Lagoon. At the time the surveys started, most of Langebaan Lagoon was private property, but all landowners except one, allowed the counts to go ahead. The results of the early counts were a large component of the motivation that lead to the proclamation of the West Coast National Park in 1986, with the lagoon as its key component.
The 35 years of waterbird counts at Langebaan Lagoon make it the wetland with the longest time series of counts in the southern hemisphere. Sadly, in spite of the extra level of protection that the national park has brought to the lagoon, numbers of waders have decreased over the decades. Curlew Sandpipers, which breed in the northern zone of the tundra in Siberia, have shown the largest decrease. This is more likely to be a consequence of global change impacts on the tundra and the loss of habitat at stopover sites on migration routes than an impact of any changes at Langebaan Lagoon itself, or the general area.
During the survey today, observers not only counted the waterbirds but made lists of all the species they saw, and these lists will be collated into checklists for the four pentads that the lagoon straddles. It seems important, in these days of high transport costs, to make a survey like this contribute to more than just one project. | | |
| | 2010-02-03 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 workshop in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal |
The next in the new series of SABAP2 workshops is scheduled for Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, on Saturday 13 February. If you live anywhere within striking distance of Ladysmith, this is the workshop for you. 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 Scout Hall, Beacon Road, Hospital Park. It will begin at 08h30 and will end around 12h30.
The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng. There is no charge.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Malcolm Drummond at malcolmd@metroweb.co.za or phone him at 0825512919.
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| | 2010-02-03 | Les Underhill | | Free State reaches 50% coverage |
31 checklists were submitted for the Free State yesterday, and 13 of these were for pentads atlased for the first time. The new pentads were in the northeastern Free State, in the Bethlehem area. This magnificent effort took coverage in the Free State beyond 50%. Five of the 11 atlas regions now have coverage above 50% (the other four are Gauteng 100%, Mpumalanga 69%, KwaZulu-Natal 67% and Western Cape 52%).
The 50% coverage in the Free State translates into 933 or 1862 pentads visited. Rumours are reaching us in Cape Town that Team Free State is not going to think about relaxing until they pass 1000 pentads covered, and become the first province to reach this milestone. | | |
| | 2010-02-02 | Les Underhill | | CAR – news on 30th January 2010 summer count |
Quite a few atlasers were involved in the CAR project last Saturday. Donella Young, coordinator for the project provides an initial report:
The 30 January CAR count was preceded by reports of flooding in parts of the Gauteng and Free State provinces. So much so that Brian Colahan, Ornithologist for the Free State Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, had to postpone the counts in the two northern precincts, where many roads were impassable, until this coming Saturday. This was quite a task as it meant getting messages out to about 50 route leaders, fortunately email and sms did help. Craig Whittington-Jones, of the Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Environment, also had a challenge organising for 25 routes in that sodden province to be counted, fortunately most roads were passable.
Because there had been so many sightings of African Openbill Storks on the various birdnets I sent a message out to the CAR email distribution list asking observers to remember to include this species in their counts. Robyn Kadis, Chairperson of the newly formed BirdLife Berg River club, and I were absolutely delighted when we spotted two of this species at the first farm dam on a new route near Villiersdorp, before we had even travelled 1 km! Yesterday, I had an email describing African Openbills walking along the pavement in Barkly East most evenings, apparently looking for garden snails!
I would like to thank all of you who participated in CAR on Saturday, especially those who had incredibly muddy roads to contend with. I have received some emails describing adventures with roads washed away! Understandably it has not been possible to complete some routes, but I am amazed at the lengths that people are prepared to go to in an effort to complete their route. Some have made long detours to get to the other side of a flooded river or quagmire! Colin Williams who counts a route near Standerton wrote: "3 km later our Saturday morning counting spree came to an abrupt halt as the road was nowhere to be seen! Washed away with concrete pipes strewn across the veld."
Brian Dennis, of Somerset West Bird Club, and his team Jeff Crocombe, Allistair Lockhart and Johan Slabbert, had the unusual highlight of seeing a group of seven Black Storks on an Overberg route. I was thrilled to hear that they saw two Karoo Korhaans nesting as well. Jill Mortimer, Ann White, Rene Lind and Heide Wetmore, also of Somerset West Bird Club saw a group of Southern Black Korhaans which is most encouraging, as the CAR routes have shown a marked decline in this species over the last ten years (see p. 7 of booklet entitled Birds and environmental change: building an early warning system in South Africa at http;//adu.org.za/docs/climate_change_booklet.pdf).
I have already received 20 completed CAR roadcount forms, with the Underberg and Humansdorp precincts complete! I am delighted that a new route was explored near Kuruman in the Northern Cape. A big thank you to the 36 Precinct Organisers for their invaluable help in ensuring that routes are counted. I really appreciate all the time and effort on the part of approximately 800 CAR participants in gathering this important information concerning so many threatened species. Thank you for filling in the route description form as well, particularly the agricultural information. In April I will post an interim website report on the CAR webpage, once most of the roadcount forms are submitted.
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