| 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 SABAP2 systems at all. We have been warned that tomorrow's slot might be longer than normal (from 09h00–20h00). The SABAP2 website might not be available and the processing incoming 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 talks at bird clubs next week | 
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). | | |
| | 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 | | SABAP1 vs SABAP2 distribution change: Southern Grey-headed Sparrow | &rr=0) 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. | | |
| | 2010-03-08 | Les Underhill | | Reminder: SABAP2 workshop in Port Elizabeth on Saturday, 27 March | 
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 | | |
| | 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. | | |
| | 2010-03-07 | Les Underhill | | Free State passes 1000 pentads visited | 
Today, the Free State became the first province to get the number of pentads visited to a four-digit number. This is a remarkable achievement, because the bird clubs in the Free State are relatively small, and there is not a large number of birders to call upon to become atlasers. Well done to the atlasers of the Free State, both resident and visiting, who have worked really hard to push the Free State along to this milestone. Rick Nuttall, Director of the National Museum in Bloemfontein, deserves special mention for his coordination and leadership of Team Free State.
There are 1862 pentads in total in the Free State – it is the third largest province – the 1003 pentads covered represent 54% of the pentads in the province – the map shows which pentads have been covered. Although today represents a great milestone, and a time to pause for a celebration, lots of work remains to be done, filling in the gaps, and getting second, third, ... , checklists for as many pentads as possible. | | |
| | 2010-03-04 | Doug Harebottle | | GPS pentad tracks now available on website | For those atlasers who use GPSs to navigate from one pentad to the next, Ernst Retief has developed some files that you can download and install on your GPS device allowing you to see where the pentad boundaries are in relation to your current position.
The files come in three versions: for Garmin (.gdb) , for Ozzi Explorer (.plt) and for General Exchange (.gpx). Note that these files may only be compatible with later model GPSs.
The files are accessible from the 'Resources' link on the left-hand menu - click on 'Pentad GPS tracks'. If you would like more information or have any queries please contact Ernst directly. | | |
| | 2010-03-02 | Doug Harebottle | | 700th observer joins SABAP2 | Annemarie Rohrs from Kwazulu-Natal became the 700th observer to contribute to the project. She submitted a card this afternoon from pentad 3015_3035 - this is the pentad in which Vernon Crookes Nature Reserve falls. Thanks Annemarie for your contribution and becoming part of a growing atlas network. Your participation and contribution all helps to piece together the puzzle of species distributions in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, and assist us in finding out how these have changed since the first atlas over 20 years ago.
It has taken just over 7 months to get from 600 observers to 700 observers. This equates to an average of 14 new active participants per month. Our ongoing atlas workshops have possibly accelerated this growth over this period as more and more people get to know about the project and want to get involved.
If you would like to get involved with the project please contact Doug Harebottle | | |
| | 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 | | |
| | 2010-03-02 | Les Underhill | | Orange-breasted Waxbill – is this a species of conservation concern? | &rr=0)
This is the comparison map for the Orange-breasted Waxbill, 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.
The overwhelming prodominance of RED and ORANGE for this species has to be worrying. Is this a species that is quietly slipping away unnoticed? It is SABAP2 that draws our attention sharply to this possibility. It is maps like these that testify to the value of SABAP2, and justify all the time, money and effort spent on fieldwork. Once we know which species to be concerned about, we can try to find and understand the causes of their declines, and try to take conservation actions which make a difference. | | |
| | 2010-02-27 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 feedback at the BLSA AGM | Please note that during the BLSA AGM from 19–21 March at Wakkerstroom there will be SABAP2 report back session. This meeting will include
- A report from Les Underhill about the SABAP2 Project (including some interesting maps showing comparisons between SABAP1 and SABAP2 data).
- A session chaired by Doug Harebottle, where you will be able to ask questions, provide feedback, raise issues etc.
It will be held on the Saturday afternoon from 14h30–16h00. We will finish in time to attend the BLSA Annual General Meeting. The venue still needs to be confirmed. Please note this meeting is open to everybody – not only atlasers.
So if you have not booked to attend the AGM why not consider doing so. Wakkerstroom is in relative easy reach of atlasers in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Free State. It would be really great to see you all there. For more information about the AGM is on the BLSA website
If you are planning to attend the atlas feedback session please email Ernst Retief because it will assist us in doing the necessary planning.
There must be a bunch of open pentads between wherever you live and Wakkerstroom, so on your way take a break while driving and atlas some of them. Gauteng based atlasers can for instance have a look at all the open pentads around Amersfoort!
We are also planning do lots of atlasing during the weekend and it would be great if we can submit lists for most of the pentads in the quarter degrees square around Wakkerstroom (and even further) during the weekend. We will have some pentad maps available and we will try to co-ordinate the atlasing effort during the weekend. | | |
| | 2010-02-25 | Les Underhill | | 2010 IUCN Red List revisions | There is final opportunity until the end of February to provide comments on proposals to make changes to the Red List status of a set of species currently under consideration. There is a list of draft decisions in a spread sheet at proposed changes in Africa.
Species occurring in southern Africa which are affected by the proposals are
African Penguin: change from Vulnerable to Endangered
Ludwig's Bustard: change from Least Concern to Vulnerable
Southern Ground Hornbill: change from Near-threatened to Vulnerable
Corncrake: change from Near-threatened to Least Concern
The ordering of threat categories is Least Concern, Near-threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered. Thus three species are moving into categories of greater threat and one, Corncrake, is now reclassified as Least Concern.
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| | 2010-02-21 | Les Underhill | | 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 this website soon.
To improve the quality of the SABAP2 data still further, four things are needed:
1. To expand the coverage, by visiting any unatlased pentad anywhere.
2. But it would be especially valuable to expand the coverage in the big gaps. If you can, choose a quarter degree grid cell that does not yet have any of its pentads atlased. Many of the remaining gaps are in "cold spots". We need dedicated atlasers to go to these areas – because it is only as we get the cold spots well atlased that we can appreciate how small and how valuable the "hot spots" are.
3. To get second, third, fourth, ... checklists for as many pentads as possible – and aim for at least seven – which seems to represent good basic coverage. If you have a choice of pentads to atlas in, choose the ones with the smallest number of checklists.
4. To go really deep in a wide scattering of pentads – this is especially valuable for understanding more subtle changes, for which really large samples are essential, e.g. in estimating the timing of migration on an annual basis, vast numbers of carefully made checklists are invaluable.
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| | 2010-02-20 | Les Underhill | | Free State moves to the top of the SABAP2 log | As of today, the Free State is the province with the most pentads visited at least once. It took over top spot from the Western Cape, which has dropped to second place. The table, for the nine provinces of South Africa, plus Lesotho and Swaziland, now looks like this
967 Free State
966 Western Cape
884 KwaZulu-Natal
767 Mpumalanga
581 Northern Cape
558 Limpopo
547 Eastern Cape
487 North West
271 Gauteng (but there aren't any more to do!)
66 Lesotho
52 Swaziland
The Free State is on a mission to become the first region with over a 1000 pentads covered. Ultimately, the winner of this race has to be the Northern Cape, with a total of 5103 pentads to be covered, more than twice the size of the Eastern Cape, the second largest with 2254 pentads.
The full summary is at
http://sabap2.adu.org.za/prov_table.php, and is always available from "Summaries" on the left hand side menu of this website. | | |
| | 2010-02-18 | Les Underhill | | BirdLife South Africa AGM |
The BirdLife South Africa AGM at Wakkerstroom takes place during the weekend of
19–21 March 2010. Mark Anderson says: "It promises to be loads of fun, with great lectures, outings, courses, dinners, etc, etc, and I'd like to encourage you all to attend. The speakers/course presenters/outing leaders include Warwick Tarboton, Faansie Peacock and David Johnson!
"The Gauteng Bird Club Forum has done a great job arranging the AGM
weekend, and many people are adamant that this will be the AGM weekend
to beat all previous AGM weekends.
"Wakkerstroom will obviously benefit, and if we fill every bed in town,
the town folk and surrounding community will be further convinced
about the importance of birding (to conservation and the local
economy)."
More details about the AGM are available on the
BirdLife website
There are lots of pentads in the region which are either unatlased, or only have one or two checklists! So we can make it an atlasing weekend too, and give SABAP2 a big boost. | | |
| | 2010-02-18 | Michael Brooks | | SABAP2 data processing |
The system was restarted this morning at 07h30. All queued data submissions were processed. The normal pattern of automatic five-minute updates resumed. If you submitted data overnight, please check that your submission is in the database. If it is not there, please email me | | |
| | 2010-02-16 | Les Underhill | | Port Elizabeth workshop on Saturday 27 March |
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 | | |
| | 2010-02-11 | Les Underhill | | We have added one Gauteng in 2010 |
2009 ended with 5884 pentads visited at least once. Today, this grew to 6158 pentads, an increase of 274 in the 42 days of 2010 so far. Gauteng has 271 pentads. So we have already added an area the size of Guateng to the SABAP2 coverage map in 2010. Somehow, in spite of the fact that unvisited pentads are getting farther and farther away from most atlasers, the rate at which new pentads are covered does not seem to be slowing down. Well done, Team SABAP2. | | |
| | 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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| | 2010-02-02 | 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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| | 2010-02-02 | Les Underhill | | World Wetlands Day, 2 February 2010 |
The government of the Republic of South Africa has designated its 20th Wetland of International Importance, and its seventh in KwaZulu-Natal, effective on World Wetlands Day, 2 February 2010. Ntsikeni Nature Reserve
(9200 ha, 30 08S 29 28E), located in an area rich in wetlands, is one of the largest high altitude wetlands in South Africa and has undergone the least ecological change due to the protective measures in place as a Nature Reserve. The site is recognised as the second most important breeding site for the Wattled Crane in South Africa and also as significant to the endangered Long-toed Tree Frog Leptopelis xenodactylus, Oribi Ourebia ourebi, and other wetland dependent mammals. The maintenance of the sites character is under threat from commercial afforestation activities occurring outside of its borders that are a major source of alien invasive species. This is 1904th Ramsar site to be declared.
This news is reported on the Ramsar website
The new Ramsar site falls in pentad 3005_2925, and has six checklists recording a total of 98 species. All six checklists report the Wattled Crane. The other five species with 100% reporting rates are Jackal Buzzard, African Marsh-Harrier, Denham's Bustard, Cape Longclaw and Long-tailed Widow. | | |
| | 2010-01-31 | Les Underhill | | 35% coverage, 29000 checklists and the SABAP2 workshop at Rustenburg | Today, 31 January 2010, we reached 35% coverage. More or less, simultaneously, the count of the number of checklists received by SABAP2 reached 29000. A total of 68 checklists have been submitted in the past 24 hours, an impressive 12 were from pentads being covered for the first time, and the total number of records was 3507.
The workshop in Rustenburg yesterday was attended by 21 people, and we welcome all of them on board as part of Team SABAP2. We thank Estie van der Merwe and all at BirdLife Rustenburg for making excellent arrangements. Thanks to Ernst Retief for leading the workshop.
More SABAP2 workshops, which cover all the things you need to know to become an atlaser, will be held at strategic locations over the next few months. Watch this space for details.
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| | 2010-01-27 | Les Underhill | | Two-thirds coverage in two provinces this month |
Both Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal have now got two-thirds of their pentads visited at least once.
Mpumalanga, which has a total of 1088 pentads allocated to the province, reached the 2/3rds point on 11 January. It has already moved on to 68.8% first time coverage. 37.5% of the pentads in Mpumalanga have more than one checklist.
KwaZulu-Natal, with 1296 pentads in total, reach 66.7% today. 35.5% of KwaZulu-Natal's pentads have more than one checklist.
So these two provinces, in second and third places in the coverage stakes, run neck and neck. Both are provinces which are species rich, and where many species come to the ends of their distributions. So excellent coverage of them is very important to SABAP2. | | |
| | 2010-01-25 | Les Underhill | | Swaziland on 25% (and other imminent milestones) |
SABAP2 has eleven administrative regions, the nine provinces of South Africa, and Swaziland and Lesotho. You can view the regional coverage statistics here.
This morning, Swaziland reached the SABAP2 milestone of 25% coverage – 51 of the 203 pentads classified as being part of Swaziland have had at least one visit.
At 23.6%, the Eastern Cape is also getting close to the 25% first coverage milestone – but the Eastern Cape is big, and reaching 25% needs another 32 pentads to be visited for the first time. After that, only the Northern Cape and Lesotho regions remain below 25%.
The Free State is on 49%, and needs only another 19 pentads to reach 50% coverage. Then it will join the 50%-plus club along with Gauteng (on 100% coverage), Mpumalanga (68.9%, and closing in on 70%), KwaZulu-Natal (66.5%, and only two pentads short of two-thirds coverage) and the Western Cape (52.2%). Gauteng is now only two pentads away from having all pentads covered a second time – ultimately, we would like most pentads to have more than a single checklist. The bottom line is that SABAP2 progress, although disparate across the regions, is steadily upwards, with coverage milestones being reached at regular intervals.
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| | 2010-01-25 | Les Underhill | | "How do I find the unatlased pentads easily?" |
New coverage map underpinned by Google Earth!
Under "Summaries" on the left hand side menu of this website, click on the new item on the submenu "Coverage Map – Google". A Google map appears, with the pentad coverage overlaying it. Click on the + button on the top left hand corner to zoom in. Click on the arrows at the top to move east or west, north or south – or you can simply "drag" the map around with your mouse.
As you zoom in closer, you see the road system and towns in relation to atlased and unatlased pentads. If you click on the map, the code for that pentad appears in the box in the top left corner of the screen. Press "Submit" on an atlased pentad and you will find the details of atlasing already done in that pentad; you can for example download a (provisional) list of species already observed and their reporting rates so far. (If you click on "Reset", the adjoining box, you get back to the original map before you started doing any zooming in.)
This new facility ought to help answer the frequently asked question: "How do I find the unatlased pentads easily?"
The old-style coverage map, which used to be at the top of this submenu, is now the second item on it. | | |
| | 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. | | |
| | 2010-01-21 | Doug Harebottle | | Pentad coverage shape file update |
The latest update for the coverage shape file is now available to download. The last update occurred on 11 December 2009, so for all GIS users, you should see some fairly substantial changes to your pentad coverage layer.
A reminder to all Christine GIS users, that version 1.4 is now also available to download. This is a minor upgrade from 1.3 but nevertheless it is always beneficial to use the latest available version.
Do not forget that these downloads plus other download options are always accessible from the software downloads page. | | |
| | 2010-01-18 | Les Underhill | | Funding is available 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. 30 000 of them. 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!
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| | 2010-01-18 | Les Underhill | | Only 1.1% of Gauteng is still yellow |
Of the 271 pentads classified as belonging to Gauteng, only three remain with just a single checklist and are therefore YELLOW on the coverage map. The last three pentads that need a second visit are 2515_2840; 2620_2805 and 2630_2750. So 98.9% of Gauteng is either ORANGE or a darker shade.
Getting on for half the pentads in Gauteng (124 which is 46%) already have DARK GREEN (or darker) status, with seven or more checklists. This depth of coverage will enable intensive and detailed analyses of bird distributions and how their are changing.
Well done team Gauteng. Please do keep up the in depth fieldwork. | | |
| | 2010-01-02 | Les Underhill | | Final reminder: SABAP2 workshop Polokwane next Saturday – Save the date: 30 January: SABAP2 workshop in Rustenburg | (1) This is the final reminder that the next SABAP2 workshop is in Polokwane next Saturday 9 January 2010. If you live in this area and want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will be held in the Polokwane Nature Reserve and participants must meet at the entrance gate at 08:00. The meeting will start at 08h30 and will end at the latest at 12h30. If you have a laptop, you can bring it with and the SABAP2 software, etc. will be able to be loaded onto it for you. In the afternoon we will do some atlasing in the Polokwane Nature Reserve!
The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.
Coffee/tea will be provided, free of charge, by BirdLife Polokwane.
To confirm your attendance and for more information please send an email to Jo Grosel at edenroutes@telkomsa.net or phone him on 0824155250.
(2) If you live within striking distance of Rustenburg, watch this space for details of the SABAP2 workshop to be held on Saturday 30 January. | | |
| | 2009-12-29 | Les Underhill | | Paint the town RED | John Carter and Team Somerset West have painted the entire quarter degree grid cell 3418BB Somerset West RED. Each of the nine pentads in this QDGC now has 25 or more checklists, with the most atlased pentad having 33 checklists. Although there are QDGCs with larger total numbers of checklists, the team in the little town Somerset West have kept up a consistent effort across the nine pentads in their QDGC, and they have been rewarded by producing SABAP2's first entirely RED quarter degree grid cell – not only this, but every one of the nine pentads has at least one checklist in each month of the year.
Well done, John Carter and team – you have painted Somerset West RED. | | |
| | 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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| | 2009-12-17 | Les Underhill | | Sappi BirdLife South Africa Birding Big Day – outcomes for SABAP2 | The SABAP2 category of Birding Big Day took place over nine days, 21–29 November. Thanks to everyone who participated, and ensured that WHAMB, our spring mini-project within SABAP2, ended with a big surge of data. Although checklists for the period are still arriving, this seems a good point to write a wrap up.
264 atlasers took part – that is 41% of all atlasers.
676 checklists were submitted; 2.6 checklists per participant!
510 different pentads received one or more checklists – that is 9% of all pentads ever visited by 29 November.
71 pentads received their first coverage; that is nearly eight per day.
41778 records were submitted; that is 62 species on average per checklist.
676 checklists in nine days means a rate of 75 checklists per day. If we could maintain this pace for the 62 days of DeJaVU, we would get to 4650 checklists, way beyond the target of 4000 lists.
41778 records in nine days represents an average of 4642 per day, which extrapolates to 287 804 in 62 days. Which makes the DeJaVU target of 220 000 records look as if it is manageable.
So the boost given to SABAP2 during this nine-day period was really encouraging. | | |
| | 2009-12-16 | Les Underhill | | A quarter of the way through DeJaVU | Our midsummer project for SABAP2 is the December-January Atlasing Vacation Unlimited, DeJaVU. We want to cover as many pentads as possible during the holiday period, when lots of atlasers are moving around the region. We set some pretty tough targets for the two-month period – progress is summarized in a table on the top right hand corner of the website. Above the table is a map that is twice-enlargable by clicking on it, to see which pentads still need to be visited.
The DeJaVU table on the website shows that we are a long way short of 25% for four of the five targets. This is where we ought to be a quarter of the way through DeJaVU! But data submission is slow because all our atlasers are out there beavering away in the field, and we look forward to great heaps of data arriving in the fullness of time.
This is our one and only chance to map the distribution of bird species this summer. With lots of data for each summer we can see, for example, how variable such as rainfall inluence the distribution of birds. If every atlaser did at least three checklists in December and did this again in January, we would meet the targets comfortably. | | |
| | 2009-12-16 | Les Underhill | | One third of the pentads have at least one checklist |
We have passed 33.33% coverage of the SABAP2 atlas region. Of the 17310 pentads, 5776 (33.35%) now have at least one checklist.
Thank you to every atlaser who has contributed to the project. Provided we can make inroads into the great gaps in the coverage of the Northern Cape, we are on track for SABAP2 delivering a superb product.
Remember we want to go "deep" as well as "wide" – another important milestone that has slipped by almost unnoticed is that the percentage of atlased pentads which have at least two checklists has finally crept past 50%, and has now reached 50.9%.
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| | 2009-12-13 | Les Underhill | | New record for a five-day card – 212 species |
Atlaser Bruce Lawson atlased his home pentad (2220_3110) in the far north of Kruger National Park over the period 26–30 November and generated a list of 212 species. This is a new record for the largest number of species on a five-day card for a pentad. Bruce broke a record of which he was the undisputed holder; his previous record was for the same pentad with a list of 202 species. This record checklist produced only two ORFs. One was bad news – he saw two Common Mynas in a remote area almost on the Limpopo River, opposite Zimbabwe. Let us hope they were the only two. The other species was a new bird for the area entirely, Pink-throated Twinspot.
We only know how good these hot spots are if we also atlas the cold spots. The atlasers who diligently atlas the areas transformed into birding deserts by mining, afforestation and agriculture make a huge contribution to SABAP2. Our arguments for the conservation of hot spots are far stronger if we have high quality data on how miserable the cold spots are.
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| | 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 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 | | |
| | 2009-12-11 | Doug Harebottle | | New atlas stories... |
Four new stories have been added to the stories page and are well worth a read.
Eddie du Plessis shares some atlasing tales with us and gives us some idea of what to expect (or not to expect!) during his upcoming summer atlasing, while Andy Branfield has written two pieces, sharing his atlas experiences of Birding Big Day (or Week). Dawie de Swardt then shares his story about atlasing 'military style'
As many of you will no doubt be venturing out this summer to DeJaVU, you are bound to have some interesting or humorous encounters along the way. Why not share these experiences with the rest of the atlasing community. Send your holiday atlas stories and photos to Doug Harebottle and in January we'll be able to 'read all about it!'. | | |
| | 2009-12-11 | Doug Harebottle | | Regional coordinator for Mpumalanga |
We are glad to announce that Peter Lawson will take on the role as regional atlas coordinator for Mpumalanga, as from 1 January 2010.
Peter has been part of the provincial vetting panel since the inception of the Mpumalanga RAC, and will now take on an additional role trying to mobilize atlasers, cover priority gap areas and promote atlasing in this region. Peter is a well known bird guide and long time member of BirdLife Lowveld and knows the province's birds exceptionally well.
For all Mpumalanga based atlasers, please contact Peter directly with any queries or questions, and for all other atlasers, if you intend on visiting the 'land of the rising sun' it may be worthwhile contacting Peter and letting him know what your plans are - he may just be able to assist with logistics or other local contacts to make your atlasing more rewarding etc.
Peter can be contacted at peter@lawsons.co.za or Tel. 013 7412257.
On behalf of the project team, we wish Peter well in his new venture. | | |
| | 2009-12-11 | Doug Harebottle | | Pentad coverage shape files update |
The latest pentad coverage shape files for use in Christine GIS (and other GIS packages) are now available to download.
Note: this will be the last update for 2009. The next update will be on 11 January 2010. Please refer to the coverage map on the website for interim updates. | | |
| | 2009-12-08 | Les Underhill | | 33% |
Yesterday evening, SABAP2 reached 33% of pentads with first-time coverage. It took only 25 days to get from 32% to 33%. The previous three "one percents" took an average of 30 days.
Where were the new pentads that took us from 32% to 33%? They were in all regions, except Gauteng (which is within an ace of getting itself up to the next level of double coverage, with only a handful of pentads which have just one checklist). It takes 173 new pentads to increase coverage by 1%. 32 of these were in KwaZulu-Natal, 29 in the Free State, 26 in the Western Cape and 25 in the Eastern Cape.
We are now 58 pentads away from the next really important milestone, one third (33.33%) coverage. The summer holidays are about to start, and we know that lots of atlasers are hatching plans to atlas far and wide. So we ought to be far past this milestone by the end of January. | | |
| | 2009-12-04 | Les Underhill | | Weavers of the world | Dieter Oschadleus, who heads up SAFRING maintains a fascinating and ever-growing website that deals with the Weavers of the World. It is a great resource, and well worth a visit. And returning to from time to time.
Of all passerine families, the weavers are the most fascinating. The species in this family are exceptionally diverse. Some are insectivores, others are granivores. Some of colonial nesters, others are solitary. And when it comes to reproduction, almost anything goes. | | |
| | 2009-12-02 | Les Underhill | | Atlasing 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. | | |
| | 2009-11-29 | Les Underhill | | Two-thirds of all quarter degree grid cells have at least one pentad visited |
If you go to "project targets" at "summaries" on the left hand side menu on this website, you will see that Target 2 has reached 66.7%. What this means in practical terms is that we have atlased in two-thirds of the 2025 quarter degree grid cells in the atlas region.
Within the greater SABAP2 project, this is a key target – a minimal coverage of one pentad visited in each quarter degree grid cell.
Over much of the atlas region, we are well on our way to achieving far better coverage than this. This is especially true near the towns and cities. The upcoming holiday season represents a time when many atlasers will travel through unatlased territory. Please bear this in mind – in among all the considerations in choosing which pentads to visit during the holiday period,
please try to pick one or two in an uncovered quarter degree grid cell.
The Northern Cape retains a coverage status best described as "alarming". Although SABAP2 has made encouraging and exceptional progress in the Northern Cape in 2009, the province is huge and thinly populated and we have a long way to go. This is going to be the priority area for spending the SABAP2 share of the money raised through Birding Big Day as travel subsidies for atlasers. | | |
| | 2009-11-28 | 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. SABAP2 was represented at the congress by Doug Harebottle, Les Underhill and Michael Brooks and we presented a poster entitled "The second southern African bird atlas project - changes and conservation outcomes". Michael and Doug also presented a poster entitled "Evaluating and verifying bird checklist data using integrated bio-demographic bird datasets", based largely on bird atlas data, and which one first prize as the best poster at the congress!
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 official PAOC12 programme and a list of past PAOC congresses. | | |
| | 2009-11-26 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Ringers' Conference at Barberspan Nature Reserve: 12–15 March 2010 |
The next ringers’ conference will be held at Barberspan, Nort-West Province, from 12–15 March 2010. There will be many exciting talks at the ringers conference as well as many opportunities for ringing. Registration and other details will appear on SAFRING’s web pages soon. Ringers, trainees, and anyone wanting to know more about ringing is welcome to attend. Atlasers are especially welcome – there are lots of unatlased pentads in the district!
One of the planned 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. | | |
| | 2009-11-25 | Les Underhill | | Road safety and the atlas |
The best strategy we can think of for getting those in-the-middle-of-nowhere pentads done is to suggest to atlasers that they plan to break their journeys for two hours in some isolated pentad. So if you are travelling a long distance to your holiday destination this summer holiday, please do what the road safety signs along the national roads implore you to do: "Take a break". What we would like you to do is to take an ATLAS break.
Of course, please don‘t atlas from a highway – get onto the minor roads for your atlasing. Prepare carefully in advance, by working out your target pentad beforehand. Look at the map on the website carefully, and print it out.
Remember that as soon as the excitement of the climax to WHAMB and the SABAP2 category of Birding Big "Day" wind down, we launch into DeJaVU (December-January Atlasing Vacation Unlimited). For DeJaVU, we are trying to go as WIDE as we can for the summer holidays. So we can use the only chance we will ever get to document the distribution of our birds in summer 2009-2010. | | |
| | 2009-11-22 | Les Underhill | | Latest news on other ADU websites | | From time to time, don‘t forget to check the other ADU websites for Latest News! Both the main ADU website (http://adu.org.za) and the SAFRING website (http://safring.adu.org.za) have recent additions to their Latest News.
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| | 2009-11-21 | Les Underhill | | Bar-tailed Godwit from the Dutch Wadden Sea to Langebaan Lagoon |
On 8 November 2009, Cape Town birder Per Holmen, went to the Seeberg hide in the West Coast National Park at Langebaan Lagoon. Per reported to Capebirdnet: "The birding at Seeberg was fantastic. There were a zillion terns roosting just outside the hide: I picked up Common, Sandwich, Caspian and Little. Soon the waders started to arrive. Besides the Common Whimbrels, Grey Plovers, Kittlitz‘s Plovers, Curlew Sandpipers, White-fronted Plovers and Sanderlings, I had quite a few Bar Tailed Godwits (and took a photo of one which looked like a Christmas tree). Also Red Knots, Eurasian Curlews and one Lesser Sandplover and a Terek Sandpiper."
The picture of the Christmas tree barwit with its colour rings (a yellow flag on tibia of the right leg, two yellow rings on the left tarsus and and two blue rings on right tarsus) flew round the world. At one stage the possibility was entertained that the bird had been ringed in northwestern Australia. The two numbers that were legible on the metal ring eliminated this as a possibility. The other barwit colour ringing research project is done by the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, NIOZ, but the key person Bernard Spaans was out doing fieldwork on the isolated island of Griend in the Wadden Sea. The NIOZ project is entitled Studying the ecology of Red Knots Calidris canutus and Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica by individual colour-ringing.
Bernard replied yesterday: "Just back from Griend: two weeks of rain and storm, and not a single barwit caught! Anyway, the barwit on the picture of Per is definitely one of our NIOZ birds. It was ringed on 30 July 2003 on the Richel, a sandbank in the Wadden Sea (53.17 N, 5.08.23 E), a male.
The metal ring is Arnhem 1386244. It has never been observed since it was ringed."
The NIOZ website reports that the project has made 10,627 resightings of 1,821 different individuals. About 90% of resightings came from the Dutch part of the Wadden Sea. 778 were made in Mauritania in west Africa. Other countries were Spain (34), France (34), England (30), Germany (81), Ireland (12), Belgium (2), Finland (6), Norway (4), Poland (1), Denmark (8) Sweden (17), Senegal (3), The Gambia (1) and up till now the farthest resightings from Namibia (14).
Well, Per's bird changes that. The farthest resighting is now Langebaan Lagoon in South Africa.
Atlasers, please keep a close watch for ringed birds, and especially the Christmas trees. They represent individually colour-ringed birds, and a knowledge of their movements is especially valuable. Carefully note the pattern of rings. Please report to SAFRING; this website has a facility for reporting resightings of colour ringed birds, and for reporting recoveries of dead birds. | | |
| | 2009-11-20 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 category of Birding Big Day starts tomorrow! |
The SABAP2 category of the Sappi BirdLife South Africa Birding Big Day starts tomorrow. The map and tally counters above will chart our progress.
Here again are the final details of how the SABAP2 category will work. We urge all atlasers to participate, not only to help promote and increase awareness of the project, but especially to support both SABAP2 and BirdLife South Africa.
Fieldwork is to be done by strictly following the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2 protocol; i.e. a minimum of two hours intensive Birding Big Day style fieldwork in each pentad.
Participants need to be registered atlasers, with Animal Demography Unit (ADU) observer numbers. Prizes will be based on a lucky draw, so the only thing you need to do to enter in the draw is to participate, to raise a minimum of R250 for Birding Big Day, and to deposit this in the BirdLife South Africa account by 7 December 2009.
Participants can do as many pentads as they are able during the "week" starting tomorrow, Saturday 21 November, till next Sunday, 29 November 2009. That gives us two weekends and the week in-between!
Sponsorship will be per record. You need to warn your sponsors that they might have to fork out for the Fork-tailed Drongo lots of times! You might like to offer your sponsors the possibility of sponsoring you to a fixed amount!
Participants should submit their entry form to BirdLife South Africa once they have submitted their data to the ADU. The entry form is on the BirdLife South Africa website. The form, and the sponsorship raised, needs to reach BirdLife South Africa by 7 December 2009. For bank deposits and electronic transfers, please use the reference BBD SABAP2 and your observer number. The bank details are on the entry form.
50% of the sponsorship raised in this category will be invested in SABAP2, mainly in the form of travel subsidies to enable us to reach unatlased pentads.
The Birding Big Day week is the grand finale to WHAMB, the four-month mini-project within SABAP2 to Welcome Home All Migrant Birds. | | |
| | 2009-11-18 | Michael Brooks | | Website maintenance and down time - 22 November 2009 | | Just a note to say the will be a maintenance slot on Sunday 22 November 2009, so all ADU websites will be down for periods during the day. This maintenance downtime coincides with the UCT scheduled maintenance day, so services may be interrupted during the day.
Thanks | | |
| | 2009-11-14 | Les Underhill | | KZN reaches 60% |
SABAP2 momentum in KwaZulu-Natal continues unabated. As of today, 60% of the 1296 pentads in the province have at least one SABAP2 full protocol checklist – that‘s 778 pentads. Just over half of these, 398, have a second checklist, and 148 pentads have seven or more checklists. That means one in nine pentads in the province with seven or more lists, and shaded dark green or darker on the coverage map. So KZN is going places in the SABAP2 scheme of things, both going "WIDE" and going "DEEP". | | |
| | 2009-11-13 | Les Underhill | | Survey and suggestions |
Thanks to everyone who participated in the ADU websites survey. Our special thanks to all who made suggestions about improvements to the websites. We now have lots of ideas to think about, and we will steadily implement as many as we can.
The link to ":Suggestions": remains open on the left hand side menu of this website. Please use this facility to make suggestions about the website (and also about SABAP2).
Thank you for your ongoing support. | | |
| | 2009-11-12 | Doug Harebottle | | Shape file updates |
There are two updates to take note of:
The pentad coverage layer was updated on 11 November. By downloading and installing this update you will be able to view the latest pentad coverage in Christine GIS Map Viewer or any other GIS package (e.g. ArcView).
The other update is that the shape file (layer) for all National Parks is now available for download. When installed, you will be able to view the boundaries for all National Parks in South Africa, and coupled with the pentad coverage layer will give you an idea as to the extent of coverage in each Park. Our thanks to SANParks for making this layer available for SABAP2.
Both of these downloads are self-extracting and will automatically install to the appropriate directory on your hard drive (once you click on the Unzip button). You must have Christine GIS Map Viewer installed on your computer and have loaded the Christine project file before downloading these updates. For more information on Christine GIS Map Viewer and other shape files go to the software downloads page on the website. Any queries should be directed to Doug Harebottle. | | |
| | 2009-11-12 | Les Underhill | | 32% |
Today we reached 32% coverage. 5543 of the 17310 pentads in the atlas region have at least one visit. We have been averaging 22 days per 1%, since we were on 8% coverage. But getting from 31% to 32% took 36 days - the last time we took longer than this to increase coverage by 1% was the 41 days it took to get from 5% to 6%, back in the early days of the project, in March last year.
As unatlased pentads get farther and farther away from most atlasers, it is going to be increasingly hard to maintain the momentum of ever-increasing coverage. We do hope that lots of atlasers are planning to get to new pentads during the summer holidays for DeJaVU (The December January Atlasing Vacation Unlimited), and especially to take two-hour breaks in the middle of nowhere to get those really difficult and isolated pentads done.
But repeated visits to well-atlased pentads are important because these enable us to analyse inter-year variation in bird distribution, caused by variation in rainfall, etc. Please keep atlasing, either by going "wide" or by going "deep". | | |
| | 2009-11-11 | Les Underhill | | Birds and Environmental Change: building an early warning system in South Africa |
This is a 16-page booklet which will be given to all delegates to next month's climate change meeting in Copenhagen. It contains some important results
which flow out of various long-term bird monitoring projects, including
some stunning comparisons between SABAP1 and SABAP2. The booklet pays
tribute to all the citizen scientists who participate in these projects.
The booklet will certainly help you understand the significance of active regular participation in projects such as SABAP2. It will also help you to explain to people why they should sponsor your participation in the SABAP2 category of Birding Big Day.
It is the fruit of a collaboration between SANBI, the ADU and
other partners, and was funded by Denmark. There will be a
printed copy in every posted issue of Africa - Birds & Birding in
February-March (the printing will be completed just too late to catch the December-January issue).
The booklet (1.7MB) can be downloaded by clicking here, or by going to "Environmental Change" on the left hand side menu of the SABAP2 website.
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| | 2009-11-10 | Doug Harebottle | | Migrant species list updated |
Two species (Amur Falcon and African Paradise Flycatcher) have been added to the migrant species tables. These were accidentally omitted from the original document.
Click here to download the updated tables.
Speaking of kestrels, keep a lookout for Lesser, Red-footed and Amur Falcons which should be arriving in fairly large numbers during November. Information on roosts for any of these species can be reported as additional information to SABAP2 but should also be reported to the Migrating Kestrel Project. This project, which is coordinated by Anthony van Zyl, aims to create awareness and improve our knowledge of the ecology of Lesser, Amur and Red-footed Kestrels, through roost counts and other conservation initiatives. The website also contains a wealth of information on kestrels and is well worth a browse. | | |
| | 2009-11-10 | Les Underhill | | Workshop in East London on Saturday 12 December |
There will be a SABAP2 workshop in East London on Saturday 12 December. If
you live in this part of the Eastern Cape (or will be visiting it for holidays!!), and want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will be held in the Enviro Centre at the Nahoon Estuary Nature
Reserve. It will begin at 09h00 and will end around 13h00. If you have a
laptop, you can bring it with and we will load the SABAP2 software, etc,
onto it for you.
The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for
SABAP2 in Gauteng.
In the afternoon we'll do some atlasing in one of the East London pentads.
There is no charge and coffee/tea and a light lunch will be provided by
Birdlife Border.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to
Jeff Curnick at jeffcurnick@gmail.com or phone him on 082 874 7391.
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| | 2009-11-10 | Les Underhill | | 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."
Damara Terns breed at a tiny number of sites along the South African coastline. If any atlasers encounter breeding Damara Terns (or adults flying around carrying fish) over this coming summer, please let Les Underhill know. One chapter of Justine's thesis is an overview of the status of this species throughout its breeding range.
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| | 2009-11-09 | Les Underhill | | Eastern Cape reaches 20% |
Coverage, in the sense that pentads have at least one checklist, reached 20% in the Eastern Cape over the weekend. 453 of the 2254 pentads (20.1%) have been visited. This is an important milestone for the project. Only the enormous Northern Cape (10.6% coverage) and the mountainous Lesotho (14.5%) have still to get to this level of coverage.
Atlasing momentum has been increasing steadily this year in the Eastern Cape. To accelerate this momentum, we are planning to hold SABAP2 workshops there over the next little while, with Port Elizabeth and East London being priority venues. Watch this space. | | |
| | 2009-11-09 | Les Underhill | | Birding Big Day, the SABAP2 category |
Here are the details of how the SABAP2 category in Sappi BirdLife South Africa Birding Big Day will work. We urge all atlasers to participate, not only to help promote and increase awareness of the project, but especially to support both SABAP2 and BirdLife South Africa.
Fieldwork is to be done by strictly following the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2 protocol; i.e. a minimum of two hours intensive Birding Big Day style fieldwork in each pentad.
Participants need to be registered atlasers, with Animal Demography Unit (ADU) observer numbers.
Prizes will be based on a lucky draw, so the only thing you need to do to enter in the draw is to participate, to raise a minimum of R250 for Birding Big Day, and to deposit this in the BirdLife South Africa account by 7 December 2009.
Participants can do as many pentads as they are able during the "week" Saturday 21 November to Sunday 29 November 2009. That gives us two weekends and the week in-between!
Sponsorship will be per record. You need to warn your sponsors that they might have to fork out for the Fork-tailed Drongo lots of times! You might like to offer your sponsors the possibility of sponsoring you to a fixed amount!
Participants should submit their entry form to BirdLife South Africa once they have submitted their data to the ADU. The entry form is on the BirdLife South Africa website. The form, and the sponsorship raised, needs to reach BirdLife South Africa by 7 December 2009. For bank deposits and electronic transfers, please use the reference BBD SABAP2 and your observer number. The bank details are on the entry form.
50% of the sponsorship raised in this category will be invested in SABAP2,
mainly in the form of travel subsidies to enable us to reach unatlased pentads.
The Birding Big Day week is a fitting climax to WHAMB, the four-month mini-project within SABAP2 to Welcome Home All Migrant Birds. By this week, most migrants should have returned to the summer areas, so maximizing data collection during this week provides scientifically valuable data as well. | | |
| | 2009-11-09 | Les Underhill | | The longest north-south caterpillar |
When Dieter Kassier atlased pentad 2635_3005 on 6 November he filled a critical gap. The pentad is just southeast of Ermelo in Mpumalanga. The is the longest north-south caterpillar, 111 pentads long, in the project, and stretches from the northern tip of the Kruger National Park into the Eastern Cape.
There is another pentad in southern Mpumalanga, on the R23 between Standerton and Volksrust, which represents the last remaining gap to complete a caterpillar between Pretoria and Durban. It is pentad 2705_2925! | | |
| | 2009-11-06 | Les Underhill | | The Website is maroon | | The SABAP2 category in the Sappi BirdLife South Africa Birding Big Day starts in two weeks time, on Saturday 21 November, and runs for a week. The new (and temporary) colour is a reminder to all atlasers to start turning thoughts about participation into a resolutions about where to atlas and how to get sponsorship. Funds raised will be split 50/50 between the project, mainly for travel subsidies and for the conservation and advocacy work of BirdLife South Africa. Watch this space (and the space above) for more details. | | |
| | 2009-11-05 | Les Underhill | | Other ADU projects | | Don‘t miss out. From time to time, have a look at the websites of the other Animal Demography Unit projects. They are all reachable from the home page of the main ADU website, which is at http://adu.org.za. Most of the project websites have a Latest News section on their home pages, just like this one. At the bottom of the Latest News is a link called "more", and you can find earlier Latest News stories there (so you can always get access to the Old News!) | | |
| | 2009-11-04 | Les Underhill | | It seems that caterpillars grow in spring |
Record for yellow caterpillar is smashed!
The longest yellow caterpillar (a string of atlased pentads going either north-south or east-west, stepping across corners permitted) now runs from Cape Columbine, near Saldanha Bay, to Kei Mouth, east of East London, a total of 127 pentads. The previous record was 106 pentads from near Kimberley to near Richards Bay. A yellow caterpillar has at least one checklist per pentad.
The longest green caterpillar (a caterpillar with each pentad having four or more checklists) is now 24 pentads, running east west across Gauteng. The longest red caterpillar (25 or more checklists per pentad) is nine pentads long, in Gauteng.
It is fantastic to see all the little clusters of atlased pentads rapidly getting linked up together. If you get a chance to visit a pentad in a gap between these clusters, do please atlas it.
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| | 2009-11-03 | Les Underhill | | Workshop in George, Western Cape |
There will be a SABAP2 workshop in George, along the Garden Route, on Saturday 14 November. If you live in this area, and want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will be held in the George Museum. It will begin at 09.00 and will end around 13h00. If you have a laptop, you can bring it with and we will load the SABAP2 software, etc, onto it for you.
The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.
In the afternoon we‘ll do some atlasing in one of the George pentads.
There is no charge and coffee/tea and a simple lunch will be provided free of charge as well.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Henk Alting at henkalting@mweb.co.za or phone him on 083 414 0350.
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| | 2009-11-02 | Les Underhill | | DeJaVU is the "December-January Atlasing Vacation Unlimited" |
DeJaVU 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. | | |
| | 2009-11-01 | Les Underhill | | WHAMB at three-quarter time | Well, today is 1 November, and we are three-quarters of the way through WHAMB, Welcome Home All Migrant Birds. We started on 1 August, and soon had quantified the arrival of the intra-African migrants, such as the White-throated Swallow. We have one month to go, and by the end of November, the migrants from Eurasia, such as the Barn Swallow, will have reached the Western Cape.
With one month to go, where do we stand, statistically. We set ourselves a target of 450 observers participating; currently we are on 461 - 74% of the 624 atlasers who have submitted a checklist since SABAP2 started in July 2007, have participated in WHAMB. Which is an amazing record.
We were hoping for 1250 checklists per month, a total of 5000. We are already at 4055, 81%, so we are on target to smash this record too.
Each participant in WHAMB has averaged a remarkable 8.8 checklists.
We were hoping for a total of 300 000 records, and are at 72% of the target. Hopefully, November lists will contain more and more of the migrants, and be a bit longer on average than the earlier lists were, and push us closer to the target.
We had hoped to collect data for 2000 different pentads, and only have 226 to go. The 1784 pentads which have been visited during WHAMB represent a third of the 5480 pentads which have ever been atlased.
Our target had been to visit 800 new pentads; we are at five-eighths of this instead of three-quarters! To meet these "go wide" targets in future, we will need to be able to provide travel subsidies. One way to raise money for travel subsidies is to participate in the SAPPI BLSA Birding Big Day at the end of November.
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| | 2009-10-30 | Les Underhill | | Gauteng 100% yellow, 90% orange and 39.9% dark green |
90% of the 271 pentads in Gauteng now have at least a second checklist (and are shaded orange in the coverage map). 39.9% of pentads have at least seven checklists (and are shaded dark green on the coverage map), so only one more pentad needs a seventh visit to bring this up above 40%.
Repeated visits to pentads are important for lots of reasons. One use for them is to enable the macro-ecologists and biogeographers to produce plots that show how the number of species recorded increases with increasing volumes of data. These plots are then used to estimate the species richness of the area. These plots, and the estimates of species richness, will be most reliable if observers follow the SABAP2 protocol diligently: at least two hours of "birding big day"-style fieldwork in as much of the pentad they can reach, with species recorded in the order in which they are identified.
One of the (many!) wonderful things about SABAP2 is that the project does not only have lots of data from areas like Gauteng, where there are lots of birders, it also has lots of rural areas with high-intensity data: around Phalaborwa, Beaufort West, Aliwal North, Mooreesburg, to name just a few.
We encourage atlasers to "go wide" and get to the 68.4% of pentads that are not yet visited, but if those pentads are getting farther and farther from where you live, please "go deep" in the areas which are accessible to you. | | |
| | 2009-10-28 | Doug Harebottle | | Western Cape heading for 50% |
The Western Cape is seven cards short of reaching 900 pentads, and approximately 25 cards short of reaching 50% coverage.
It has been a marvelous achievement by all atlasers concerned to get to this level, and now we just need a final burst to get half of the Western Cape covered.
Although it‘s getting more difficult to reach new pentads, we‘d like to encourage and motivate all Western Cape atlasers to try and target at least one new pentad in the coming weeks.
It would be great if we can reach these targets before the end of the year and make the Western Cape the fourth province to get to 50% coverage.
It will certainly be a great way to end the 2009 atlasing year. Keep up the great work, Western Cape! | | |
| | 2009-10-27 | Les Underhill | | Green and Red Caterpillars |
The SABAP2 concept of a caterpillar is a string of atlased pentads, all going east-west or north-south, except that you are allowed to step over the corners. The longest ordinary caterpillars stretch for more than 100 pentads.
The time has come to work on Green Caterpillars and Red Caterpillars. Green Caterpillars are strings of caterpillars which are shaded green (or darker colours) on the coverage map; every pentad in a Green Caterpillar has four or more checklists. Right now, our longest Green Caterpillar stretches east-west across Gauteng, from North West Province into Mpumalanga, and it is 23 pentads long. The longest Red Caterpillar (25 or more checklists for each participanting pentad) is nine pentads long and stretches from just south of Johannesburg to just north of Pretoria.
In the future, these strings of well-atlased pentads will help us understand shifts in bird distribution, so they are valuable assets in the SABAP2 database. They are data gems. Their development is greatly encouraged. | | |
| | 2009-10-26 | Les Underhill | | Yet another WHAMB target reached |
We set outselves the target of getting 20 or more checklists for at least 25 pentads. We reached this target today, and we still have just over a month to go.
And we are just two atlasers short of reaching the target of 450 observers participating. Reaching this target means that a very large proportion of the 612 people who have ever atlased need to be active during WHAMB.
We are on track to reach the target of 5000 checklists during the WHAMB period. We have reached 76.3% on 26 October, so we have passed 75% of the target before 75% of the time has run out.
Reaching the target of 800 new pentads during WHAMB increasing seems a pipe dream. We are on 474, only 59% of the target. We seem to have hit the tipping point at which new pentads are getting more and more remote from most atlasers and getting 200 new pentads per month as regular as clockwork is no longer feasible. If there are no new pentads to be atlased near you, please try to give pentads second coverage, then try to get them to dark green on the coverage map (7+ checklists). It is especially for pentads that have really deep coverage (red, purple, pink) that we will have the baseline against which future change in bird abundance can be measured.
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| | 2009-10-26 | Les Underhill | | Website changes | Dramatic improvements to internet bandwidth have enabled us to move the SABAP2 website from the USA to a server in the ADU. For most users of the website, the speed of delivery of SABAP2 data for the website ought to improve noticeably.
Another knock on effect of this move is that the SABAP2 website now updates automatically every five minutes with incoming data, instead of every three hours. The five-minutes updates run 24/7. The five-minutely updates have now been running flawlessly for a week, so it is time to formally announce the change, and especially to thank Michael Brooks for his ongoing enthusiasm for developing the SABAP2 website.
So atlasers no longer have to wait for up to three hours to check if their checklists have been incorporated into the database. Within five minutes, incoming data ought to pervade all aspects of the database: pentad lists, quarter degree grid cell lists, data summaries, species maps, seasonality graphics, ... As with everything to do with computers, there will be exceptions to this from time to time; hassle free operations depend on a host of systems, some of which are beyond our control, working like clock work. | | |
| | 2009-10-24 | Les Underhill | | Another WHAMB target reached | WHAMB (Welcome Home All Migrant Birds) is doing a great job of quantifying the arrival of migrants at present. We reached another of our WHAMB targets today. Already, with more than a month to go till the end of November, we have 150 pentads with more than five checklists.
There are five pentads which are red on the WHAMB map (top right hand corner of the home page); three of these have 34, 35 and 36 checklists, and they could easily reach purple status (50 checklists) by the end of November.
WHAMB is unashamedly about going deep, with lots of checklists per pentad. Our midsummer challenge, our mini-project for December-January, will be unashamedly about going wide, as we try to get a snapshot of bird distribution in midsummer 2009/2010. | | |
| | 2009-10-23 | Doug Harebottle | | Spring Chameleon Challenge |
Just a quick note to say that the leaderboard for the individual Spring Chameleon Challenge has been removed from the homepage and can now be accessed via the ‘Spring 2009‘ link on the left hand menu. This makes way for a more focussed look at the WHAMB challenge. | | |
| | 2009-10-16 | Doug Harebottle | | Pentad coverage shape files update |
The pentad coverage shape files, for use with Christine or other GIS packages, were updated today and are now available for download.
Click here to download and unzip it directly, or you can go to the software downloads page and download it from there. | | |
| | 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 acronymis 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. | | |
| | 2009-10-14 | Doug Harebottle | | 600 observers |
The 06h00 update today revealed that we have reached 600 active observers. It is encouraging to see that new observers are steadily being added to the SABAP2 team, which all adds to the cause of expanding our coverage and levels of participation.
A few interesting stats about our 600 active observers:
* 273 have submitted less than 10 cards
* 103 have submitted 10-24 cards
* 81 have submitted 25-49 cards
* 73 have submitted 50-99 cards
* 43 have submitted 100-199 cards
* 14 have submitted 200-299 cards
* 13 have submitted 300 or more cards
What is fascinating is to see the broad spectrum of different levels of participation with some die-hard atlasers going full steam but also lots of people who are making in-roads into the project and submitting their first batch of cards. One thing is certain, all are committed and enthusiastic citizen scientists and every contribution is as important!
If you have a family member or friend who is a keen birder why not encourage them to register as an observer. The more atlasers we can get into the field the better! The on-line registration process is quick and easy (click on the ‘On-line registration‘ link on the menu) and they‘ll receive an observer no. and card shortly thereafter. A starter kit CD is available to help them get up and running as quickly as possible or they can get all the software and resources from the website.
Please contact Doug Harebottle if you have any queries
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| | 2009-10-09 | Les Underhill | | Mike Buckham atlased on a bicycle this morning covering 25 km in 3355_1825 and recording 29 species |
Mike Buckham is part of a team that atlases pentad 3355_1825, which is centred on the suburb of Rondebosch in Cape Town, but includes Devil‘s Peak, Kirstenbosch, Rondebosch Common, Newlands Cricket Ground, University of Cape Town, Hartleyvale Lake, part of the City Bowl, and the wetlands down by the River Club in Observatory. He regularly does his bit on a bike! He tells the story of today‘s adventure.
"This morning, thankfully, was a pleasant ride [editor‘s note: this is code for "the south easter was not howling"]. I am in a rambling mood this morning having just finished a relatively stressful task at work.
"For those of you that do not know me I used to run on the contour path and Les Underhill and I used to put in a list for 3355_1825 regularly. It worked very well until I managed to injure my foot badly enough that it put a stop to my Saturday morning jaunts across the mountain. I am now mountain biking with great gusto and although the sound of crunching tyres and a squeaking chain can drown out the sound of bird song I still find that it is a great way to atlas. It also means I get a lot more distance covered and although the Newlands Forest and Kirstenbosch paths are out of bounds for cyclists, there is still enough habitat in our pentad to cover on a bicycle. My method is simple - I ride with a small voice recorder attached to the chest strap of my camelback and as I hear a species I log it on the recorder.
"For those of you who are still reading my ramblings you may be interested in the route I take. I have a standard 25 km loop with some variation depending on wind, but the standard is a ride from Paradise Motors up to the M3, along the cyclist/runner path just above the M3, left at UCT and up the rather unpleasant tarred road to Rhodes Mem. At the top of the long straight we turn left past the forestry houses and meander our way to the path that overlooks Rhodes Mem (yes, it is incredibly steep and rather exhausting). We then cross onto the city bowl side riding above the Groote Schuur Reserve and once again start working our way upwards to Tafelberg Road. We turn down off Tafelberg road just before Platteklip Gorge which happens to be the western border of the pentad. We descend (rather frantically) to Deer Park and then start working our way all the way back up again towards Rhodes Mem. We then return home via a few tar roads. The ride involves about 900m of vertical climbing (which is a lot in 25kms) and it takes us about 1 hour 40 minutes. At the moment we leave at around 05h15 so we have the benefit of some night birds (we had Fiery-necked Nightjar and Spotted Eagle-Owl this morning) although in a month‘s time that may not be the case.
"It is truly magical to be on the mountain like it was this morning. We had some really nice birds including a Familiar Chat (which is relatively irregular for me) as well as Cape Siskin on the City Bowl side which is also not that common. I only recently added Cape Bunting to the pentad about 4 weeks ago and subsequent to that I have found a very territorial male that sings his heart out every morning we are up there. We also always stop for a second or two directly above Rhodes Mem and this happens to be the most reliable spot (in the world) for Brimstone Canary. Chaffinch is also always vocal in that area. I usually tick all the sunbirds (Southern Double-collared, Malachite and Orange-breasted) on this route as well as Cape Sugarbird in the proteas above Rhodes Mem. Forest Canary is usually regular in the well wooded gulley above the zoo but of late I have been missing it - seemingly too early when it is still dark.
"A bird that is puzzling me at the moment is Grey-backed Cisticola. We used to get it every time we rode but recently it has been very hard to find. It seems as if the fire on the mountain earlier this year took away a lot of habitat and it may be a while before it becomes regular again. One of the beneficiaries of that is a bird that really surprised me this morning. There is a patch of the burnt area which has now recovered with lots of short grass covering on a relatively flattish section and there was a displaying African Pipit. They are certainly common down on the Rondebosch Common but it was a weird one for the mountain."
Mike got 29 species this morning, just over one per kilometre. Typically the list compiled by the enture team totals 60 to 70 species. This is team‘s 12th list for WHAMB. | | |
| | 2009-10-07 | Les Underhill | | Save Our Seabirds Festival | This month is National Marine Month and BirdLife South Africa has organized
a Save Our Seabirds Festival next week, as its contribution to marine conservation and
awareness.
Vernon Head reports that there are still
a few places left for participation in various events. Details are on the website. | | |
| | 2009-10-07 | Les Underhill | | 31% coverage and other statistical triumphs | Somehow or other, Team SABAP2 manages to keep adding another 1% onto the coverage statistic in just over three weeks. Getting from 30% to 31% took 24 days, from 13 September until today. Ultimately, we will hit the wall, as unatlased pentads get farther and farther away from where most atlasers live, and rate of increase will slow down. The fact that the coverage percentage keeps creeping upward at a steady pace is a marvellous achievement. We are now only 2.33% away from getting one-third of the 17310 pentads in the atlas region visited at least once.
Today, WHAMB reached the 50% target in terms of number of records. We are a little over two months into a four month project, so some would say we ought to have been at 50% at the end of September. But the reality is that the migrants are starting to return, and by late October and November, lists will be averaging a few species more than they are now. So we have an even chance of getting to 300 000 records for WHAMB (see top right hand corner of home page) by the end of November.
There is a bunch of "almost" statistical milestones. We are almost at 1.25 million records. Gauteng is almost on 90% coverage of each pentad for at least a second visit. The number of pentads visited for the first time during WHAMB is at 398, almost exactly half the target of 800. | | |
| | 2009-10-05 | Les Underhill | | Barn Swallow arrival looking good | So we are in "pentade 56", the 56th five-day period of the year, from 3-7 October, and the reporting rate of Barn Swallows has just started increasing. This is the same pentade as the substantial increase started last year - but last year there were more records in the earlier pentades, 53, 54 and 55, than this year. Arrival this year appears to be starting roughly a pentade later than two years ago (but remember that in the first year of SABAP2 data volumes were small, and results are not completely reliable). To see this, compare the seasonality histograms on the website. Inter-year comparisons of the timing of migration are a crucial component of the objectives of SABAP2.
A thumbnail of this year‘s seasonality histogram is on the homepage of the website, and we will keep it there for the next month or so, so that it is easy to see how the arrival of the Barn Swallow upfolds this year. Click on the thumbnail to see the full story.
The next month is critical for quantifying the return of most of the long-distance migrants. We urge all atlasers to keep WHAMBing, ie to keep Welcoming Home All Migrant Birds (see the top right hand corner of the home page).
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| | 2009-10-05 | Les Underhill | | REMINDER - Workshop at Northern Farm, Saturday 17 October | The next SABAP2 workshop in the Gauteng area will be on Saturday 17 October at Northern Farm. If you want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will begin at 08h30 (and will end by 13h00 and if you so wish you can do some birding afterwards!!) If you have a laptop, you can bring it with and we will load the SABAP2 software, etc, for you!!
There is a small entrance fee to pay at Northern Farm but the workshop itself is free. The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Ernst ernst.retief@gmail.com, or phone him on 072 223 2160 (cell) or 012 332 3323 (home).
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| | 2009-09-26 | Les Underhill | | First WHAMB target reached | WHAMB (Welcome Home All Migrant Birds) is not even half way through its four-month life cycle, and we have already reached one of the targets we set ourselves. This was the target to get two or more checklists for at least 400 pentads. We already have 401 pentads which have been revisited. So maybe we need to reset the target. Seeing that we have done 400 in under two months, do you think it is possible to reach 800 pentads visited more than once in the four months from August to the end of November?
The next target on the list is to get five or more checklists for 150 pentads. We are almost half way there, on 72 pentads. There are two pentads where atlasers are really doing well: they have 25 checklists each. Team SABAP2 is doing brilliantly. We are a cool team.
We really want to encourage atlasers to make those regular visits to their favourite pentads, and make conscientious checklists for them because it is only through the discipline of repeated and dedicated fieldwork that we will be able to make precise statements about the timing of arrival of the migrants in spring 2009. The opportunity to do this fieldwork will never come round again.
Over the next two months most of the long-distance migrants arrive from Eurasia. These are the species thought to be most at risk from global climate change. Through SABAP2, we can all pool our efforts to build the big picture, and find out whether or not these migrants are adjusting their migration timing to take account of the earlier arrival of spring across their breeding ranges far to the north of us. | | |
| | 2009-09-25 | Les Underhill | | Common Terns from Namibia to Ireland | Once in a while it is nice to do a report from SAFRING on the SABAP2 "latest news"!
A recent email from Ireland reported two Common Terns with SAFRING rings. One had originally been ringed as a fledgling on 8 July 1999 at Rockabill (53 35N, 06 00W), Dublin, Ireland. It was next handled by Mark Boorman at the Mile 4 Saltworks, Swakopmund, Namibia on 7 February 2007. In the past two years, it has been recorded breeding, back at the colony where it hatched --- on 16 June 2008 and 30 June 2009. So 10 years after it had hatched, it was still breeding. The "great circle" (shortest) distance between Rockabill and Mile 4 Saltworks is 8967 km. Suppose the actual distance flown is 10000 km; it probably flies south along the coast of Africa. Two migration trips per year for 10 years adds up to 200 000 km. And that excludes all the foraging trips. Pretty impressive for one pair of wings.
The second Common Tern has a less exciting history. It was ringed by Mark at the Mile 4 Saltworks on 12 September 2006, and was recorded at Rockabill at the "club" site where the non-breeding terns hang out, on 5 August 2009.
Most of the Common Terns visiting southern Africa breed in the Baltic Sea region of northern Europe, and into far northern Finland, but visitors include terns breeding as far west as Ireland, as far east as the Black Sea, and as far south as Italy.
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| | 2009-09-22 | Les Underhill | | Northern Cape reaches 10% | The Northern Cape is far and away the largest province, with 5103 pentads, more than twice that of the second largest province, the Eastern Cape, with 2257.
So it is great to be able to report that the Northern Cape has reached 10% coverage. 511 pentads have now been visited at least once. Each additional 1% of coverage here requires an additional 51 pentads to be done (compared with 15 in an "average"-sized province such as Limpopo).
Thanks to all atlasers, both resident and visiting, who are helping the Northern Cape‘s coverage to maintain an upward trajectory.
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| | 2009-09-21 | Les Underhill | | WHAMB at one-third for all targets |
Our mini-project within SABAP2, WHAMB - Welcome Home All Migrant Birds, has done amazingly well at documenting the arrival times of Intra-African migrants. Probably, the White-throated Swallow is the leading species here.
At this point in time, 22% of pentads that have ever been atlased have been atlased since the beginning of last month; the WHAMB map at the top left hand corner of this page is pretty impressive. We already have at least two lists for 368 pentads, 67 pentads have at least five lists, and one pentad already has an astonishing 25 lists, and so is RED on the WHAMB map!! The long-term value of this repetitive data is immense. Floods of data make data analysis more certain, and make interpretations unambiguous.
WHAMB is a long haul project, and runs till the end of November. Now that we have welcomed the Intra-African migrants, we need to get ourselves geared up to welcoming the Palearctic migrants back. Individuals of a few species can be expected to start arriving any time now, but the bulk of most of the migrants will be during October and November.
The timing of the return of these long-distance migrants is of great interest and importance, because it is these species that are predicted to be most strongly impacted by global climate change. So we urge all observers to intensify their efforts to atlas over the next few months, and especially to make repeat checklists (at five-day intervals between starting successive lists) of the pentads that they can conveniently revisit. | | |
| | 2009-09-17 | Doug Harebottle | | Interesting atlas story |
John Carter from Somerset West has submitted an interesting story about his atlasing ventures in some of his local pentads. Last Saturday he completed some surveys and besides reaching his 300th card he discovered some fascinating results....
To read more, click here | | |
| | 2009-09-17 | Les Underhill | | Gauteng Workshop: Northern Farm, Saturday 17 October | A reminder that the next SABAP2 workshop in the Gauteng area will be on Saturday 17 October at Northern Farm. If you want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will begin at 08h30 (and will end by 13h00 and if you so wish you can do some birding afterwards!!) If you have a laptop, you can bring it with and we will load the SABAP2 software etc for you!!
There is a small entrance fee to pay at Northern Farm but the workshop itself is free. The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Ernst ernst.retief@gmail.com, or phone him on 072 223 2160 (cell) or 012 332 3323 (home). | | |
| | 2009-09-14 | Les Underhill | | Field assistants for Marion Island | Marine and Coastal Management and the Percy FitzPatrick Institute Centre of Excellence, UCT, have a project on Marion Island to monitor long-term performance in selected seabird species. Three field assistants are required to spend a year on the island from April 2010. The incumbents will continue field work with albatrosses and giant petrels, penguins and other seabirds monitoring parameters that have been followed since the 1980s. The positions require attending two weeks of team training in March 2009 and then go to Marion Island from April 2010 to early May 2011 as part of the South African National Antarctic Programme‘s Marion Island team.
Application deadline: 30 September 2009. Contact Genevieve Jones (mgenevievewjones@gmail.com) or Leshia Visagie (lupfold@deat.gov.za) for full details. | | |
| | 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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| | 2009-09-11 | Doug Harebottle | | Coverage shape file for Christine updated today |
The coverage shape file was updated today. Click here to download and unzip the files and view the latest coverage in Christine GIS.
You can also download the file from the software download page where additional shape files (pentads, one-degree cells, quarter-degree cells, provinces, towns, roads, etc.) are also available to download and viewed in Christine. | | |
| | 2009-09-10 | Les Underhill | | July had the most checklists ever |
The number of SABAP2 checklists received so far for July is 1391, so it has just overtaken the previous high of 1385 for December last year. It is very impressive and pleasing to see this level of commitment and involvement in the depths of winter.
At 0800 this morning, August was already on 1377. We know from experience that there is lots of August data out there waiting to be submitted, so within the next week or so, August will break the 1400 barrier. Keep an eye on the Summary Graph on the website. | | |
| | 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. | | |
| | 2009-09-02 | Les Underhill | | Caterpillar from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth completed | | Observer 10394 Mrs L Reed atlased pentad 3355_2425 on Sunday, and submitted the checklist today. The big significance of this list was that it completed the caterpillar from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. This is a pretty remote pentad, on the R62 roughly halfway between Humansdorp and Kareedouw. Lots of atlasers have contributed to this caterpillar, but it is a special achievement to fill the final gap. | | |
| | 2009-09-01 | Doug Harebottle | | FAQs update |
Firstly, the FAQ link is now on the main part of the menu which should provide for easier access.
Secondly, there have been some requests lately about transferring the DMS field data sheets from one computer to another (e.g. you buy a new computer and want to use your new computer for data entry but you still want to keep your existing field sheets). This is possible and we have updated the Software (DMS) FAQs to now include guidelines on how to do this.
Keep up the fantastic work...and remember atlasing is for the birds!
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| | 2009-09-01 | Les Underhill | | 75% of Half Degree Grid Cells have four pentads covered | The first day of Spring, 2009.
SABAP2 reached a nice milestone today. 75% of the Half Degree Grid Cells have four or more pentads covered. Getting on for two-thirds of the 2024 Quarter Degree Grid Cells have been visited (64.4% to be exact), and 39.9% of them have three or more visits.
There is no need to encourage Team SABAP2 to spring into action; the springing action has been winding up and up continuously. Once all the July checklists are in the system, July will be the project‘s best month ever, and August represents the first time that we have had more than 1200 checklists submitted by month end.
September has a strategically located public holiday on the 24th, a Thursday. We hope that some atlasers will be able to turn it into an atlasing long weekend. | | |
| | 2009-08-30 | Les Underhill | | Gauteng workshop, Saturday 17 October |
The next SABAP2 workshop in the Gauteng area will be on Saturday 17 October at Northern Farm. If you want to learn more about the project please consider attending.
The workshop will begin at 08h30 (and will end by 13h00 and if you so wish you can do some birding afterwards!!) If you have a laptop, you can bring it with and we will load the SABAP2 software etc for you!!
There is a small entrance fee to pay at Northern Farm but the workshop itself is free. The workshop will be conducted by Ernst Retief, the regional coordinator for SABAP2 in Gauteng.
Please confirm you attendance as soon as possible by sending an email to Ernst ernst.retief@gmail.com, or phone him on 072 223 2160 (cell) or 012 332 3323 (home).
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| | 2009-08-26 | Doug Harebottle | | Pentad coverage shape files update |
The next update of the pentad coverage shape files - for use with Christine - is now available.
To download and extract the files click here. Alternatively you can also go to the software download page and update the files from there. | | |
| | 2009-08-23 | Les Underhill | | Save the dates: 12-15 March 2010 | | This is an invitation from SAFRING, the bird ringing unit. Remember to diarise 12-15 March 2010 for the next SAFRING Ringers‘ Conference, to be held at Barberspan, North-West Province. Guest speakers that have been invited include Mark Anderson, director of BirdLife South Africa, and Colin Jackson, from Kenya, expert on ageing and sexing African birds in the hand. The event is designed to be interesting not only to ringers, but also to those, like the atlasers who belong to Team SABAP2, who take a scientific interest in birds. | | |
| | 2009-08-19 | Doug Harebottle | | Introductory letter for landowners - update |
The explanatory letter for landowners (on the Resources download page) has been updated with the new ADU and BLSA logos and contact details.
For those new to atlasing or those who may not have been aware of it, this letter can be given to landowners to raise awareness about the project and which can ably assist you in gaining access to private land. Often many unexplored areas or habitats within pentads lie behind ‘Private property‘ signs and this approach hopes to facilitate greater atlaser-landowner interaction to allow access to these areas. Often many new species get added to pentad lists as a result of a friendly ‘stop and chat‘ to a farmer, many of whom are only to willing to support the project in this way.
The letters (downloadable as PDF files) are available in English and Afrikaans.
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| | 2009-08-19 | Doug Harebottle | | Vetting and Out-of-Range Forms |
We frequently get asked questions about vetting, and receive queries and questions about Out-of-Range Forms and the new species splits. Consequently, we have put together a Frequently Asked Question page that deals with all the above questions and queries.
Included within this section is an example of a completed Species Verification Sheet and the latest list of birds that constitute National Rarities.
We would like to encourage you to visit the page particularly if you would like to find out more about these issues, and to please contact us if you have any specific questions not dealt with on the page.
Click here to go directly to the page. It is accessible from the menu by going to Resources --> Frequently Asked Questions --> Vetting and ORFs. We hope this will be a valuable resource to all atlasers. | | |
| | 2009-08-14 | Les Underhill | | 29% and other milestones | Today we reached 29% of pentads with first coverage. We got to 28% on 27 July, 18 days ago. Given that the average time to increase by 1% is 21 days, Team SABAP2 has once again done amazingly well. It will feel a lot better when we get beyond 30%.
Coverage in several provinces has passed important milestones recently: Mpumalanga has reached 60%, Western Cape 45%, and both Limpopo and North West have moved past 25%. Seven of the nine provinces are now above 25%. | | |
| | 2009-08-13 | Les Underhill | | WHAMB coverage map | | On the home page of the website, top right hand corner, is a link to the coverage map for WHAMB so far. This map gets updated every three hours. Click on the thumbnail of the map to get a larger version. There is already 258 pentads that have been visited for WHAMB (nearly 6% of all pentads that have ever been visited) and three pentads have four or more checklists (so they are pale green on the WHAMB map). With scattered reports of the arrival of migrants, do keep up the regular fieldwork, but remember that many of the migrants will only arrive in the final month of WHAMB, November, so please maintain the energy levels so that we are still WHAMBing then! | | |
| | 2009-08-10 | Les Underhill | | Social get-together in the Western Cape | About 20 atlasers from the Western Cape converged on the Durbanville Nature Reserve on Saturday, in perfect atlasing conditions! It was a day out of the box in Cape Town, and it felt like spring had arrived. We were joined by Kristin Broms, from the USA, who is helping us do some statistical analyses of SABAP2 data. Kristin is a statistician, with an MSc in Quantitative Ecology from the University of Washington in Seattle - she saw her first sugarbirds, her first mousebirds and watched weavers building their nests for the first time.
As usually happens on these SABAP2 occasions, lots of atlasers met for the first time. Lots of discussion and talking before and during the braai. And lots more discussion as Doug Harebottle made his presentation after lunch. Coverage of the Western Cape is on 45% of pentads with at least one visit. There is a block of unvisited quarter degree grid cells in the north of the province, and a scattering of them across the karoo. We discussed the priorities that we would like to get a bunch of lists for every pentad, and that pentads with many repeat visits are critically important for detecting changes through time.
A big thanks to Peter and Nikki Nupen for all their organisation of the event. Greatly appreciated. Thanks also to the Durbanville Nature Reserve for enabling us the use of the facilities.
Doug will put a report under "atlasing stories" on the website soon. | | |
| | 2009-08-03 | Les Underhill | | Western Cape atlasing get-together this Saturday, 8 August |
A social get together for all Western Cape atlasers is being planned for 8 August. Besides the informal gathering and the opportunity to meet the faces behind the emails, there will also be time set aside to chat about atlasing issues. Les Underhill, Doug Harebottle and Peter Nupen will be on hand to provide feedback on current coverage updates in the Western Cape and to answer any questions that you may have concerning SABAP2.
Saturday 8 August from 11h00 to 15h00
Durbanville Nature Reserve, Racecourse Road, Durbanville.
Here are the full details
RSVP to Peter Nupen (Tel 021 930 4244) | | |
| | 2009-08-03 | Les Underhill | | Common Tern | Magda Remisiewicz, ADU postdoc from Poland, reports. "The KULING ringing group is currently running a wader and tern ringing camp at the mouth of the Vistula River (5422N 1856E), on the edge of the Baltic Sea in Poland. This is where the only Polish breeding colony of Sandwich Terns is located, and some Common Terns breed and rest there as well. Today, I got from Poland a set of observations of SAFRING rings of Sandwich and Common Terns read by telescope. One of these rings was read on 1 August 2009, just three days ago. It was Common Tern 4H36857. Tony Tree ringed this bird at Swakopmund on 23 March 2006. It is almost certainly breeding in Poland." So, atlasers, the Common Terns are still (mostly) far to the north of us - they won‘t become WHAMBable for a few weeks.
There is a photo log-book of ringing at Vistula mouth on the KULING group‘s web page, including a good set of pictures of breeding Sandwich Terns and photo stories from wader ringing and every day life of the ringing camp. The captions to the picture are in Polish, but photos tell their own story. You go to http://www.kuling.org.pl/ look at "Nowosci na stronie" (which means News at webpage) and click on the four arrows after the words "4 sierpnia" (=4 August). Enjoy.
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| | 2009-08-02 | Les Underhill | | News from last weekend‘s CAR survey |
Donella Young, the CAR project coordinator, reports on last weekend‘s CAR survey. We know that quite a few of the CAR routes were innovatively combined with atlasing fieldwork! This is a great way to maximize the conservation benefits of the travelling. Donella writes:
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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| | 2009-07-30 | Doug Harebottle | | KZN roadshow: Zinkwazi meeting |
Hosted by the Dolphin Coast Bird Club, our atlas meeting was attended by 12 enthusiastic members. Everyone enjoyed the presentation and there were discussions about how to tackle some of the gaps in KZN as well as how to involve more people at local level. Our thanks to Klaus Achtzehn for coordinating the meeting and his wonderful hospitality while staying at Zinkwazi Lagoon Lodge
That brought to end our four days in four regions roadshow in KZN, but it was great to network and meet more atlasers...and atlas some virgin pentads!
Hopefully we can do this again soon and perhaps take the roadshow to some of the other provinces in the not too distant future!
Regards Trish and Doug | | |
| | 2009-07-29 | Doug Harebottle | | KZN roadshow: Richards Bay update |
There was a great turnout (about 40 people) at our Richards Bay meeting last night (Tues 28th) which was BirdLife Zululand‘s regular monthly meeting. A large proportion of the audience were non-atlasers but it was encouraging to note that many of these expressed an interest to take part and club members Pete Outhwaite and Ben Baxter will be holding future atlas meetings and outings to stimulate further participation.
Our thanks to the club for hosting us and to Richard and Bridgette Johnstone for their fine hospitality
We move on to Zinkwazi today where we will be speaking to the Dolphin Coast Bird Club tonight. This will be the final leg of the roadshow.
Doug Harebottle and Trish Strachan | | |
| | 2009-07-28 | Doug Harebottle | | KZN roadshow: Eshowe meeting |
Although we had a small group, the meeting on Monday night went well and three more people will hopefully soon be atlasing. Our thanks to Sharon Louw of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, for arranging the meeting and the braai. Sharon is the focal point for atlasing in the Eshowe area.
We move onto Richards Bay tonight (covering an untlased pentad or two along the way!) were we will be talking to BirdLife Zululand and meeting the Zululand atlasers. If you are interested in attending the meeting please phone Trish Strachan 0824112708. | | |
| | 2009-07-26 | Les Underhill | | 28% | | The 12h00 update today got SABAP2 to 28% coverage. So there are initial visits to 4849 of the 17318 pentads in the atlas region. On average, the rate of increase is 1% in just over three weeks. Every 1% increase needs 173 new pentads to be visited. Of the latest 173, 34 have been in the Free State, 31 in the Northern Cape, 25 in KwaZulu-Natal, 20 in the Western Cape, and between 12 and 19 in the remaining provinces (apart from Gauteng which had first visits to all pentads in January). It is encouraging to see the Northern Cape so high on this list. | | |
| | 2009-07-23 | Les Underhill | | Hotspots and cold spots | It is really hard to want to go birding in the cold spots, places where two or more hours of diligent and intensive atlas fieldwork produces only a handful of species. But atlasing these areas is critically important for SABAP2. Because documenting the extent of the `cold spots‘ enables us to value the `hot spots‘. If we only atlas the hotspots, the places where we know the birding is good, then the obvious conclusion is that there are lots of birds everywhere. In reality, we might discover that the hotspots are tiny oases in a vast desert.
This is the theme of the SABAP2 article in the August-September issue of Africa - Birds & Birding.
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| | 2009-07-22 | Les Underhill | | Saturday is CAR day | On Saturday, the Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts Project (CAR) has its midwinter survey. 760 observers will cover 18000 km of South Africa‘s roads. The observers will count large terrestrial birds along 350 carefully designed fixed routes, each 50 km to 60 km long.
The CAR project has been running, midsummer and midwinter, since 1993. Over the past 16 years, CAR has garnered in a vast volume of data, providing valuable information on trends of cranes, bustards, korhaans and storks in agricultural landscapes. Many of the species are in threat categories, so the data are especially important for Red Data Book assessements. The latest CAR Newsletter highlights the results of the midsummer count and shows the long-term trends for a selection of species.
Donella Young, CAR Project Coordinator says to all participants: "Thank you so much for all the time you give to CAR, and especially for bearing the transport costs. Besides doing the count, this year we are also filling in the Route Description Forms; we do this every five years, and it helps enormously in interpreting the data."
Sally Hofmeyr‘s PhD project relates to the interpretation of the CAR database. Sally gave a talk this week at the ZSSA conference in KwaZulu-Natal What the CAR project can tell us about bustard and korhaan populations in South Africa. This is what the ADU is all about: citizen science, digital biodiversity, statistical ecology - ie collecting data on a huge scale, curating it lovingly, and doing the best possible analyses so that the fruits of all our labours are incorporated into conservation policy.
CAR‘s primary sponsor is SANBI, the South African National Biodiversity Institute.
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| | 2009-07-21 | Les Underhill | | Welcome Home All Migrant Birds - WHAMB - the communal challenge for spring | WHAMB starts in about 10 days, on 1 August and will run for four months, until 30 November. WHAMB is Welcome Home ALL Migrant Birds, a mini-project within SABAP2. It is the SABAP2 "communal challenge" for spring. WHAMB is the reverse version of LAMP (Long Autumn Migration Project). Besides doing all the normal SABAP2 things, in particular spreading their wings as wide as possible, we want to encourage atlasers to focus on atlasing one or two pentads regularly. The priceless value of this information, and we cannot get enough of it, is that it will document the timing of arrival in spring 2009. It will be fantastic to have regularly atlased pentads all over the country, so we can quantify the timing of migration in space as well as in time. We will never have this opportunity again.
Try to atlas your chosen pentad weekly, or fortnightly, or at whatever time interval is sustainable for you. You could also do this as a team, so that each atlaser takes a turn to atlas the pentad.
Do not start a new list of your own until five days have elapsed since you started the previous list. (If someone else is making a list that overlaps in time with yours, but is working independently, that is brilliant.)
Please make WHAMB lists as diligently as you would make the first list you do for a pentad. Minimum of two hours of "birding big day"-style atlasing throughout the pentad.
Also bear in mind that WHAMB is not a competition to be the first to see the migrants. As always, be cautious in your identification, and only record the species with IDs that you are absolutely certain of. The migrants somehow take forever to arrive, and this is especially true if you are farther south in the country.
More details will unfold over the next 10 days. | | |
| | 2009-07-18 | Les Underhill | | Record for longest caterpillar decisively smashed | The longest caterpillar(*) on the coverage map now runs east-west for 105 pentads. The final gap was filled in today by Dawie and Herman Kleynhans, who made a list of 61 species in 2825_2850 today, 18 July 2009. This pentad is in the Free State, a bit east of the Golden Gate National Park.
The caterpillar starts at Douglas in the Northern Cape, runs through Kimberley, Bloemfontein, north of Lesotho, across KwaZulu-Natal, and reaches the sea at St Lucia Estuary. Another great SABAP2 team achievement.
The previous record was 79 pentads, from Cape Columbine, in the Western Cape, reaching into the Eastern Cape. Three pentads need to be visited to extend this into a caterpillar with more than 120 pentads, stretching to East London.
(*)A caterpillar is defined as a string of atlased pentads running strictly east-west or north-south, but you are allowed to step across corners. The more caterpillars we have striding across the countryside, the better. | | |
| | 2009-07-17 | Les Underhill | | Doug Harebottle in KwaZulu-Natal |
Doug Harebottle who heads up SABAP2 is visiting KwaZulu-Natal over the next 10 days. The motivation for the visit is the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Zoological Society of Southern Africa which takes place at Natalia, Illovo Beach, KwaZulu-Natal, from 21-25 July 2009.
Doug is presenting a paper to the conference The second Southern African Bird Atlas Project: protocols and conservation outcomes. His is one of five ADU contributions; see Latest News on the ADU website for the others.
After the conference Doug is doing a "SABAP roadshow":
Sunday 26th: Umgeni Valley NR, Howick, 10am - Enquiries: Trish Strachan 039 835 0086
Monday 27th: Eshowe, 6pm - Enquiries: Sharon Louw 035 474 2258
Tuesday 28th: Triathlon Club, Meerensee, Richards Bay, 6pm - Enquiries: Richard Johnstone 035 901 4908
Wednesday 29th: Dolphin Coast, Zinkwazi, 6pm - Enquiries: Klaus Achtzehn 032 485 3344
If you are able to attend any of these atlaser get-togethers, please can contact the local organisers for more information.
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| | 2009-07-15 | Les Underhill | | LAMP and WHAMB | | There is now a short report on LAMP (the Long Autumn Migration Project) on the SABAP2 website. The objective of this mini-project within the overall bird atlas project was to quantify the timing of departure of migrants in a way, and on a scale, never attempted before. LAMP was important in a global context because one of the predictions of climate change is that migrants, and especially long distance migrants, will be impacted - if they don‘t change their timing of migration to adjust for the earlier arrival of spring 10000 km away, they will be in conservation trouble. The bottom line for LAMP is that the project was an unqualified success. This has two consequences. First of all, we will repeat this in reverse this spring, and Welcome Home All Migrant Birds (WHAMB). WHAMB will be a mini-project starting on 1 August, and will run for four months (because arrival migration results in a slow build up of birds) until 30 November; more details shortly. Secondly, LAMP was so good that this year‘s LAMP will be known in future as LAMP 2009, so that we can do LAMP 2010 next year, and do fine scale comparisons between years. ... And hopefully, far down the track, we will be doing LAMP 2020, so we can measure trends in the timing of migration. | | |
| | 2009-07-14 | Doug Harebottle | | Team Western Cape: Saturday 8 August |
A social get together for all Western Cape atlasers is being planned for 8 August. Besides the informal gathering and the opportunity to meet the faces behind the emails, there will also be time set aside to chat about atlasing issues. Les Underhill, Doug Harebottle and Peter Nupen will be on hand to provide feedback on current coverage updates in the Western Cape and to answer any questions that you may have concerning SABAP2.
Saturday 8 August 11h00 "“ 15h00
Durbanville Nature Reserve, Racecourse Road, Durbanville.
Here are the full details
RSVP by 5 August to Peter Nupen (Tel 021 930 4244)
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| | 2009-07-10 | Doug Harebottle | | Notification of change of contact details | This is just a reminder that should your personal contact details change, in particular your email address, please inform us as soon as possible. Having current and up-to-date details on our system will ensure that you will continue to receive all e-communications from the SABAP2 project team timeously.
Any changes to your personal details can be sent to Doug Harebottle or Tel. 021 650 2330 | | |
| | 2009-07-09 | Doug Harebottle | | Three new atlas stories... | It‘s great to see that atlasers are continuing to share their fieldwork experiences with the rest of the atlasing community. Two stories from Peter Lawson and one from Tony Archer are the latest to have been submitted and help us all really appreciate the ups, downs, serious and funny sides to the time spent in the field.Just click on the ‘Atlasing stories‘ link in the left hand menu to read all about it!
...and don‘t forget that if you have an interesting tale to tell please send your contribution to Doug Harebottle | | |
| | 2009-07-07 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Climate change leads to decreasing bird migration distances |
A new study shows that in Europe birds are migrating shorter distances due to climate change. Atlaser (and ringer) Mike Ford sent the article to SAFRING.
M Visser, AC Perdeck, JH van Balen & C Both 2009. Climate change leads to decreasing bird migration distances. Global Change Biology 15: 1859"“1865.
Abstract:
Global climate change has led to warmer winters in NW Europe, shortening the distance between suitable overwintering areas and the breeding areas of many bird species. Here we show that winter recovery distances have decreased over the past seven decades, for birds ringed during the breeding season in the Netherlands between 1932 and 2004. Of the 24 species included in the analysis, we found in 12 a significant decrease of the distance to the wintering site. Species from dry, open areas shortened their distance the most, species from wet, open areas the least, while woodland species fall in between the other two habitats. The decline in migration distance is likely due to climate change, as migration distances are negatively correlated with the Dutch temperatures in the winter of recovery. With a shorter migration distance, species should be better able to predict the onset of spring at their breeding sites and this could explain the stronger advancement of arrival date found in several short distance species relative to long-distance migrants.
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| | 2009-07-06 | Les Underhill | | Record for longest caterpillar broken | Until today, the longest strict caterpillar was 72 pentads in length, stretching east-west from the Kruger National Park into North-West Province. We now have a 74-pentad caterpillar, stretching from Cape Columbine in the Western Cape, all along the Overberg and Garden Route to Storms River in the Eastern Cape. Dieter Oschadleus, SAFRING Coordinator, filled in the critical pentad near Plettenberg Bay, to complete the caterpillar. Three more judiciously chosen pentads would extend the caterpillar to Port Elizabeth, two more would take it to East London.
The definition of a strict caterpillar is that you keep going in one direction, but you are allowed to cross over the corners of pentads! | | |
| | 2009-07-03 | Les Underhill | | SABCA evening, Botanical Gardens, Pietermaritzburg, 17 July 2009 |
SABCA is the Southern African Butterfly Atlas Project, a sister project to SABAP2. We encourage bird atlasers to get involved with the butterflies, and here is an opportunity for atlasers in and around Pietermaritzburg.
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. | | |
| | 2009-07-02 | Les Underhill | | Revamped BirdLife South Africa website | | The BirdLife South Africa website has been totally transformed. Please bookmark it and visit it regularly. | | |
| | 2009-07-02 | Les Underhill | | GATHERING FOR KZN ATLASERS & FRIENDS |
KWAZULU-NATAL SABAP2 CELEBRATION! On Sunday 26 July at 10h00 the atlasers of KZN invite you to a function at Umgeni Reserve (WESSA) in Howick. We are celebrating the achievement of exceeding the 50% coverage mark for the 1296 pentads in KwaZulu-Natal. At 10h30 there will be a presentation by Doug Harebottle, the SABAP2 Project Manager from the ADU in Cape Town. At 11h30 David Allan will present an update on vetting - David chairs the KZN Vetting Committee. We will have an braai for lunch at 12h30 - bring your own meat and drinks, the salads and rolls are sponsored by BirdLife South Africa.
This will be a great opportunity to socialise with other atlasers, hear some exciting atlas stories and share experiences. And strategize the coverage of the other 50%!
Please inform Trish Strachan, SABAP2 Coordinator in KZN, if you will be able to attend. Trish‘s landline is 039 835 0086, and her cell is 082 411 2708.
On Monday 27 July and Tuesday 28 July, Doug Harebottle and Trish will travel to the Zululand and Eshowe areas. Meetings and venues there are in the planning stages. Please keep in touch with Trish for details, and also watch the KZN atlasing blog for information.
Thanks to Trish and team for arranging these events.
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| | 2009-07-02 | Les Underhill | | First Marine Protected Area in Namibia launched today | The Namibia Islands Marine Protected Area (NIMPA) was launched today. It covers 10 small offshore islands, most of which are important for seabirds. It stretches along 400 km of coastline between Meob Bay in the north and Chamais Bay in the south, with a total area of around one million heactares. There is a lot more information in the
newspaper report.
Three people linked to the Animal Demography Unit have played a role in the creation of NIMPA. Dr Jean-Paul Roux is an ADU Honorary Research Associate, Dr Jessica Kemper is an ADU graduate, whose PhD thesis was on the declining populations of penguins in Namibia, and Dr Katta Ludynia is currently an ADU postdoctoral fellow, whose PhD at the University of Kiel, helped determine the feeding ranges of penguins around the Namibian colonies. | | |
| | 2009-06-29 | Les Underhill | | 27%, and lots of half degree grid cells |
At the 18h00 update, we reached 27% coverage, exactly 21 days after we reached 26% coverage on 8 June. Well done, team SABAP2, for maintaining this pace. We have averaged 21 days for each 1% of added coverage since we were on 8%. Maintaining this pace is getting harder and harder to do, as unatlased pentads need more and more effort and commitment to reach.
There are now 16 half degree grid cells which have all 36 of their pentads visited at least once. 12 of these half degree grid cells are contiguous, stretching across Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North-West and Free State, including a caterpillar of seven half degree grid cells.
... and we are now only 913 records away from our first million. ... do you have data you could submit before the 21h00 update? | | |
| | 2009-06-17 | Les Underhill | | Closing in on the first million records | | At the 2100 update of the website this evening, we were less than 25 000 records short of one million SABAP2 records, 24733 records adrift to be exact. Currently, our daily winter average is around 2000 records per day. So it ought to take another 12 or 13 days for SABAP2 to reach the one million records milestone - with a bit of luck (and the dedicated fieldwork of the 534 members of Team SABAP2), we should be there by 30 June, the end of the second year of SABAP2 fieldwork. To give you an idea of how the pace of atlasing has increased, in the first year we gathered a quarter of a million records, 221634 to be precise, and more than three times this number in the second year. | | |
| | 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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| | 2009-06-11 | Les Underhill | | 60% | | No, we have not jumped from 26% three days ago to 60% today. The 60% is something quite different. Today, the Project Targets show that 60% of the 2028 quarter degree grid cells in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland now have at least one pentad covered. Getting this figure up as close to 100% as we possibly can is a top priority for SABAP2. So if there is an unatlased quarter degree grid cell near you, please make a special effort to try to get it started. | | |
| | 2009-06-08 | Les Underhill | | 26% | | On 13 May we got to 25% coverage, and today we are on 26%. A one percent increase does not sound like a big deal, but in the case of SABAP2 it is, because every 1% increase in coverage involves atlasing another 173 pentads - and as we get further into the project, unatlased pentads are getting farther and farther away from home for most atlasers. So we will keep on celebrating the 1% increases - each one is a milestone on the SABAP2 journey, and each one is going to be just that little bit more difficult to reach. | | |
| | 2009-06-07 | Les Underhill | | Arnold van der Westhuizen atlased the Zastron area, on the Free State-Lesotho border |
Arnold van der Westhuizen went atlasing around Zastron yesterday, in the Free State, coveraging difficult pentads high up in the mountains right on the border with Lesotho. His latest entry in his blog describes the day.
Other atlasers with blogs include Ernst Retief, Niall Perrins and Stuart Groom. You can access these blogs anytime from the SABAP2 website, from "Links" on the left hand side menu. If you have an atlasing blog, please contact Doug Harebottle. | | |
| | 2009-06-01 | Les Underhill | | Chamaeleon Challange |
Chamaeleons change colour. So the objective of the SABAP2 winter challenge is to get pentads to change colour. The "Chamaeleon Challenge" is an individual challenge, so there will be points for each atlaser who participates.
Scoring details are on the Chamaeleon Challenge website.
First of all, we want to get pentads started, and to change their colour to yellow. So there will be "pioneer points" for the atlasers who expand the frontiers of the coverage map. After that, there will be "chamaeleon points" for atlasers when they do the checklist that changes the colour of a pentad on the coverage map. There will be bonus "dark green chamaeleon points" for the seventh checklist for a pentad, the one that changes the colour of a pentad to "dark green" - we would be ecstatic if we could turn the entire atlas area to "dark green". And finally, there will be bonus "bright chamaeleon points" for going really deep, and changing the colour of a pentad to one of the bright colours: "red", "purple" and "pink". The Chamaeleon Challenge starts on Monday 1 June and ends on Sunday 2 August.
Results will be updated three-hourly on the top right hand corner of the home page of the website.
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| | 2009-05-28 | Les Underhill | | LAMP with only three days to go | | Fieldwork for the Long Autumn Migration Project finishes this Sunday (and a new challenge will start on Monday, 1 June!). Besides building the SABAP2 database, the aim of LAMP was to track the timing of migration by getting lots of repeat visits to pentads. Without any basis for setting targets, we kind of hoped that we would get 200 pentads with five or more checklists, 50 with ten or more and 10 with fifteen or more. With three days to go, we have 21 pentads with fifteen or more lists, more than double what we‘d hoped for. We have 46 with ten or more lists, and we could easily get to 50 by the time all the data arrives. There are 119 pentads with five or more lists, so the target of 200 was clearly a bridge too far! 514 pentads have at least one repeat visit. 2113 checklists (66.2% of all checklists) made during LAMP so far are repeat visits to pentads. Apart from finding a few vagrants, checklists for LAMP this weekend ought to be confirming that the migrants have left. A new mini-project will start in August, and will last for four months, to Welcome Home All Migrant Birds (WHAMB). In the meantime, please give LAMP a final whirl this weekend, and enjoy the winter atlasing events. | | |
| | 2009-05-27 | Les Underhill | | Atlaser breaks the 400 barrier | | The SABAP2 team congratulates Stefan Theron on submitting his 401st checklist - this is an amazing record. Stefan is one of a small team of atlasers based in and around Beaufort West who have made the coverage map for this region a delight to behold. There is no one hot on his heels, but there are two atlasers in the 300s: Johan van der Westhuizen, who works the Mooreesburg district in the Swartland, and Arnold van der Westhuizen, who has made a fantastic contribution in the Aliwal North area, which straddles the Free State and the Eastern Cape. | | |
| | 2009-05-27 | Les Underhill | | Things that happen in the ADU besides SABAP2 |
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
If you are interested in ADU‘s scientific output, check the "latest news" on the ADU website from time to time.
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| | 2009-05-26 | Doug Harebottle | | Reportback from Cape Town workshop | The workshop held at Tygerberg Nature Reserve on Saturday 23 May went off successfully with 25 people attending. To read more about the meeting click here.
Our thanks to Peter Nupen, Western Cape atlas coordinator, for arranging the workshop and to the Tygerberg Nature Reserve management for allowing us free use of their excellent facilities. | | |
| | 2009-05-25 | Les Underhill | | AFRING News, the journal of SAFRING | Afring News is the journal of the South African Bird Ringing Unit, SAFRING. It provides an outlet for papers on bird ringing from throughout Africa. Since 2007, it has been on online journal. Papers from 2007, 2008, and 2009 so far, are available at
http://safring.adu.org.za/afring_news_current.php
The most recent paper deals with eye colour change in Red-billed Oxpeckers. As new papers are added they will announced on the SAFRING website. | | |
| | 2009-05-20 | Les Underhill | | "The Wader Atlas - An Atlas of Wader Populations in Africa and Western Eurasia" will be launched in London today |
This milestone publication is a compilation of current knowledge of the numbers, distribution and movements of Wader Populations in Africa and Western Eurasia and is a result of a huge international effort involving thousands of coordinated expert observers in nearly 100 countries. The Atlas includes 90 species accounts, each including full-colour maps showing populations and key sites as well as in-depth text describing the movements and status of each population. In addition, the book contains many colour photographs and detailed tables with information on 876 key sites in 85 countries within the African-Eurasian region.
The information in SABAP1 contributed critically to the southern African component of this book, as did the information from CWAC, the Coordinated Waterbird Counts
The launch of the new book takes place at the Strand Palace Hotel in London at 5pm today! For more information about the new wader atlas, see http://www.wetlands.org/waderatlas | | |
| | 2009-05-18 | Doug Harebottle | | More atlas stories... | Two more atlasing stories have been added. One from Michiel Moll about some of the experiences he has had during his 150-card compilation, and the other from Trish Strachan who ventured out with Alan Manson and Vic Roberts to visit a back and beyond pentad in rural KZN.
Both are well worth a read... | | |
| | 2009-05-12 | Les Underhill | | Eastern Cape on 15% | | The Eastern Cape is the second largest province with 2273 pentads (the Northern Cape is by far the largest, with 5090). Getting good coverage for the large provinces, with much of their areas far from the cities, was always going to be tricky. So we delighted that the Eastern Cape reached 15% coverage today. Coverage of the coastal region is looking good, and so is the hinterland of East London and south of Aliwal North. The caterpillars and carpets of covered pentads are steadily expanding and merging. We encourage all atlasers in the Eastern Cape (or atlasers who can get to the Eastern Cape) to keep pressing on. Your endeavours are greatly valued. | | |
| | 2009-05-11 | Les Underhill | | LAMP with 20 days to go | | Most of the migrants are gone, but have a look at Greater Striped Swallow. It is still steadily streaming out of southern Africa, and currently about 25% of checklists are reporting it. If last year is anything to go by, the last records will not be until around the end of May. Which is why we chose for LAMP, the Long Autumn Migration Project, to run that long. We have more than 100 pentads with five or more checklists, there are 33 with 10 or more, and there are 10 with 15 or more. There is a pentad with 30 lists, and one with 27. Thank you, Team SABAP2, for your response to LAMP, we have collected really great data. | | |
| | 2009-05-09 | Les Underhill | | 900 000 records | | At the 21h00 update today, the number of full protocol records in the SABAP2 database grew to 900 000. We anticipate reaching a million records towards the end of June. | | |
| | 2009-05-09 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 workshop for the Greater Cape Town area, Saturday, 23 May | | Be part of the largest Citizen Science project currently being undertaken in South Africa! A SABAP2 workshop covering all aspects of bird atlasing is to be held at the CHRISTO PIENAAR ENVIRONMENTAL CENTRE in the TYGERBERG NATURE RESERVE, in Welgemoed, in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town. There are more details at http://sabap2.adu.org.za/docs/tygerberg_workshop.pdf | | |
| | 2009-05-08 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 and National Bird Week | | Doug Harebottle, overall SABAP2 Coordinator, and Peter Nupen, Western Cape Regional Coordinator, spent this week at the Protea High School in Niewoudtville in the Northern Cape doing bird awareness presentations. They also did some atlasing. The story is on the SABAP2 website at
http://sabap2.adu.org.za/stories_58.php. It is a good read. On the homepage of the website, all the atlasing stories are now found under "Miscellaneous". Fascinating accounts. If you have a story to tell, send it to Doug | | |
| | 2009-05-06 | Les Underhill | | Reminder: BirdLife Northern Gauteng Open Day this Saturday | | BirdLife Northern Gauteng is hosting a "birding activities" day at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens on Saturday 9 May, from 08h00 onwards. Among the activities featured are bird ringing and atlasing, SABAP2 style. If you live in or near Pretoria, and think you might be interested, why not participate? The contact person is Rita 076 311 2662, secretary@blng.co.za | | |
| | 2009-05-01 | Les Underhill | | More milestones: North West at 20%, Free State at 30% | | Today, the Free State reached 30% coverage, and four days ago North West got to 20%. Overall, SABAP2 is at 24.3%, so we are approaching 25% coverage - we should get there in about two and a bit weeks --- this will mean that one quarter of the 17318 pentads in the atlas region will have been visited at least once. This is a fantastic achievement. Prepare to celebrate. | | |
| | 2009-04-30 | Les Underhill | | Message from Trish Strachan, KwaZulu-Natal Atlas Co-ordinator, "HAVE YOU ATLASED A PENTAD TODAY?" |
Well done to all the atlasers in KZN, we have now covered 44.8% of the pentads in the province. To reach our goal of 50% by 30 June 2009, we have to atlas 66 pentad in 61 days! I‘m sure we will manage that.
Please go and check out our KZN Atlasing Blog. The pentad charts and the QDGC summary have been updated, and there is loads of information pertaining to targets, gaps, and pentad maps.
Another LONG weekend! More time to fill those gaps, light the LAMP and enjoy the outdoors.
Happy atlasing
Trish
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| | 2009-04-29 | Les Underhill | | Citizen Sciences flourishes at the Animal Demography Unit | Each data point which the ADU‘s citizen scientists collect is a piece in the jigsaw puzzle of biodiversity. The ADU‘s mission is to fit together all the puzzle pieces, so that we can map South Africa‘s biodiversity through time. We turn the myriad bits of raw data into the kind of information that conservation decisions can be based on. For an overview of all the citizen science projects of the Animal Demography Unit, see http://www.adu.org.za/citizen_science.php
Most of the ADU project websites now have a Latest News section similar to this. Explore them from the main ADU website at http://adu.org.za | | |
| | 2009-04-27 | Les Underhill | | LAMP secures 2/3rd majority | | All the LAMP targets are now above two-thirds. This is a few days ahead of the two-thirds point in this three-month project. And this morning there are 75 pentads with five or more checklists in March and April so far. One pentad already has 20 checklists. LAMP is effectively monitoring the timing of departure of migrants this autumn. | | |
| | 2009-04-25 | Les Underhill | | "Open Day" at Pretoria National Botanical Gardens on Saturday 9 May | | BirdLife Northern Gauteng is hosting a "birding activities" day at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens on Saturday 9 May, from 08h00 onwards. Among the activities featured are bird ringing and atlasing, SABAP2 style. If you live in or near Pretoria, and think you might be interested, why not participate? The contact person is Rita 076 311 2662, secretary@blng.co.za | | |
| | 2009-04-22 | Les Underhill | | 24% | | At the 2100 update, 24% of the pentads in the atlas area had been visited at least once. Coverage is still increasing by 1% roughly every three weeks, even though it is getting increasingly more difficult to find new pentads. We value the dedication and commitment of Team SABAP2. | | |
| | 2009-04-22 | Les Underhill | | Western Cape joins 40% club | | The Western Cape reached 40% coverage today. 731 of the 1828 pentads in the province have at least one checklist. The other members of the 40%+ club are Gauteng (100% of pentads with at least one visit), Mpumalanga (53.3%) and KwaZulu-Natal (44.4%). | | |
| | 2009-04-21 | Les Underhill | | 3040_2640 Aliwal North in the PINK | | Overnight, Arnold van der Westhuizen submitted a batch of checklists for his home pentad, 3040_2640, Aliwal North, tipped the number of checklists past 100, and turned the pentad PINK on the coverage map. Well done Arnold and team. This is the second pentad to reach this milestone. | | |
| | 2009-04-20 | Les Underhill | | RED, PURPLE and PINK | | Currently, there the number of pentads coloured red, purple and pink on the coverage map has grown to 89. There are 64 RED SQUARES (25 to 49 checklists), 24 PURPLE SQUARES (50 to 99 checklists), and a single PINK SQUARE, which now has 122 checklists. There are two pentads on 97 checklists, so watch the coverage map to see them go PINK when they reach 100 checklists. Wherever you are atlasing, try to move a your favourite pentads a shade or two along the SABAP2 rainbow: yellow to orange to light green to dark green to light blue to dark blue to RED ... ... | | |
| | 2009-04-19 | Les Underhill | | Second Quarter Degree Grid Cell goes dark blue | | Every pentad in the Somerset West Quarter Degree Grid Cell (3418BB) is now Dark Blue, with 16 or more checklists. This has been achieved by John Carter and his team at the Somerset West Bird Club. The QDGC has a total of 156 checklists. This depth of coverage is valuable, because it sets a firm baseline against which future change can be measured. This is only the second QDGC with All Dark Blue status; the other one is Mooreesburg, in the Swartland. | | |
| | 2009-04-15 | Les Underhill | | Half way at half time | | Today, 15 April, is the midpoint of LAMP, the Long Autumn Migration Project. Four of the five "volumes" of data targets are above 50% (and the "cards submitted" target should get there today). So we have reached half way at half time. 49 pentads now have five or more repeat checklists since 1 March. These repeat checklists are going to prove incredibly valuable in quantifying the timing of migrant departure this autumn, 2009. This is the only opportunity we will ever get to do this. Next year will be different, and we want to obtain enough data to be able to make comparisons between years. The bunch of public holidays popping up over the next few weeks are perfectly timed for participation in LAMP, and to help us to beyond 100% at full time, on 31 May | | |
| | 2009-04-12 | Les Underhill | | SABAP2 generates Citrine Wagtail | | I was atlasing in pentad 3420_1855 late yesterday afternoon. 3420_1855 stretches from the eastern end of Bettys Bay (Harold Porter Gardens) to just east of the Palmiet River at Kleinmond. I was following the injunction to get to as many of the habitats in the pentad as possible. For this pentad, this involves a compulsory visit to the Kleinmond Sewage Works, a set of three small pans and a reedbed. There were oodles of Three-banded Plovers, generally the only place in the pentad where they occur, and lots of Cape Wagtails. A last look around revealed a stunning canary yellow wagtail, which turns out to be the second record for southern Africa. The first was at the Gamtoos River mouth in 1998. ... Atlasers have already found quite a few rarities ... | | |
| | 2009-04-09 | Les Underhill | | Migrants are leaving | | Choose your favourite migrant, and check the graph on the website which shows reporting rates for five-day periods (look at "species distribution maps" under "summaries"). For most migrants the reporting rates are dropping. This makes this the core period for LAMP, the Long Autumn Migration Project (more details on the top right hand corner of this page). We are delighted that 41 pentads already have more than five checklists done since the beginning of March, and one has as many as 14 checklists. Atlasers, the next few weeks represent our unique opportunity to document the timing of migration during the 2009 departure season. Repeat visits to your local pentads are celebrated. | | |
| | 2009-04-01 | Doug Harebottle | | New Regional Coordinator for Western Cape | | The project team is delighted to announce that Peter Nupen from the Tygerberg Bird Club has taken up the reigns as the regional coordinator for the Western Cape. Pete will act as the focal point for atlasing in the province and will focus on recruiting new atlasers, filling important gap areas and building a strong and enthusiastic network in the region. Pete is an active atlaser himslef and has been a long-standing ADU project-participant. He will soon be contacting all Western Cape atlasers, but anyone wishing to contact Pete in the meantime can get his contact details from the ‘RAC‘ link on the website menu. Welcome on-board Pete and on behalf of the team and atlasing community we wish you every success in growing the project in the Western Cape! | | |
| | 2009-03-30 | Doug Harebottle | | Half of Mpumalanga now covered | | Mpumalanga is the second province to reach 50% coverage. Well done to all who contributed to this milestone, especially Peter Lawson (Nelspruit), John McAllister (Wakkerstroom) Ken Hattingh (Middelburg) and Eddie du Plessis (Middelburg) who have all made major contributions to the project in this province If you look at the coverage map you will see that there is a nice caterpillar running west to east from the Gauteng border through to Komatipoort.
KwaZulu-Natal is most likely the next province to reach the 50% mark and currently stands on 41% with the Western Cape not far behind on 39%. To all atlasers in these provinces, keep up the great work and go for it. | | |
| | 2009-03-23 | Les Underhill | | Limpopo joins 25+% club | | Limpopo Province becomes the 6th SABAP2 atlas region to join the 25+% club. One quarter of the 1543 pentads in the province have had at least one visit. To see the SABAP2 progress at a provincial level (plus Swaziland and Lesotho), go to Summaries on the left hand side menu, and click on Provincial Summary. Overall coverage today reached 22.7%, so we are not far short of the entire atlas region joining the 25+% club | | |
| | 2009-03-23 | Les Underhill | | New feature on website: lists of SABAP2 species for Quarter Degree Grid Cells | | Until today, you could only get SABAP2 species lists for pentads. Michael Brooks, the SABAP2 software developer, put a new feature on the website this afternoon. You can now get SABAP2 species lists for Quarter Degree Grid Cells (QDGC). Go to Summaries on the left hand side menu, click on Gap Analysis, click on the 1x1 degree cell you are interested in, and in the summary data for each QDGC there is a new link which says SABAP2 Species List. It is just below the existing link for a SABAP1 Species List for the QDGC | | |
| | 2009-03-19 | Les Underhill | | 1000 new pentads since 1 December | | In the 109 days since 1 December, Team SABAP2 have atlased 1000 new pentads. That is almost 10 a day. Exactly 200 of these have been in the Free State | | |
| | 2009-03-11 | Les Underhill | | KwaZulu-Natal on 40% | | KwaZulu-Natal reached the big psychological milestone of 40% coverage today. Great work by all KZN atlasers and to atlasers who have helped in KZN. We celebrate your success. Gauteng is already at 100%, Mpumalanga is closing in on 50%. Other provinces are also increasingly being caught up in the big upwards spiral. | | |
| | 2009-02-27 | Doug Harebottle | | Changes to website menu | | The following changes/improvements have been made to the website menu. Note that some links are now included as sub-links in menu items. Two new menu items have been added - Resources and Miscellaneous. Resources links to ‘Frequently Asked Questions‘, ‘Newsletters‘, ‘Map info‘ and ‘Car decals‘ while Miscellaneous links to ‘Atlas stories‘, ‘Atlas workshops‘ and ‘Media & PR‘. Another minor change is that the Links menu now has sub-links to ‘Atlasing-related blog sites‘ and ‘Other links‘. Under the Atlasing-related blog link, we have added a link to a KZN atlas blog site. This regional blog has been set up by Trish Strachan (KZN atlas coordinator) and Colin Summersgill to assist primarily KZN atlasers with information and news about atlasing in the province. Atlasers living in KZN (or anyone wanting to atlas in KZN) should find this a valuable resource and we encourage you to visit the site on a regular basis. The blog will be updated fairly regularly. | | |
| | 2009-02-27 | Les Underhill | | LAMP, the Long Autumn Migration Project, starts 1 March | LAMP is like BASH, the Big Atlasing Summer Holiday, which atlasers did in December and January. LAMP is the SABAP2 challenge for the autumn months, from the beginning of March until the end of May. Whereas the emphasis in BASH was unashamedly "wide" first, and "deep" second, LAMP is the other way round.
Autumn is one of the key periods for SABAP2. One of the objectives for SABAP2 is to help us to define the timing of migration. We live in an era of climate change, and one predictions is that the timing of migration will change. For most of our migrants, autumn is the departure period. Atlasing, SABAP2-style, is the most brilliant way to monitor departure. As migrants depart, they get fewer and fewer and it takes longer and longer before you encounter them, and then you realize,
gosh, it is three weeks since last I had a Barn Swallow on my list. The three months March-pril-May represent the only opportunity we will ever have to quantify migrant departure in the autumn of 2009. The best way to do this is go "deep" and to make repeated checklists for pentads.
We still want our atlasers to go wide, to reach the unatlased and underatlased pentads. But particularly in autumn (and spring) there is huge value in going deep, and that is what LAMP is all about. We hope that there will be more than 200 pentads with at least 5 lists each, 50
pentads with at least 10 lists and 10 pentads with at least 15 lists.
How about setting yourself the target of doing your favourite pentad every weekend this autumn?
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| | 2009-02-23 | Les Underhill | | Mooreesburg is Dark Blue | | The Mooreesburg quarter degree grid cell today became the first QDGC to be entirely Dark Blue on the coverage map - every one of the nine pentad has at least 16 checklists, and the central one is Red, currently with 33 checklists. Well done, Johan van der Westhuizen, for your enormous contribution to SABAP2, not only for your depth coverage in Mooreesburg, but also for your breadth coverage over the Swartland (the wheat-growing area north of Cape Town), and farther afield too. | | |
| | 2009-02-21 | Les Underhill | | Bush Blackcap brings up the 600 | | At the 1800 update today, SABAP2‘s February challenge passed the 600 species mark. The 600th species to be reported by SABAP2 atlasers this month on full protocol checklists was the Bush Blackcap. Gurney‘s Sugarbird is the latest addition, bring the list to 601 species. The 30 most recently added species are on the home page of the website. The full list of species can be seen by clicking "more" at the bottom of this list. We set 650 species as a target for the month, but there was no prior experience on which to base a sensible number. We will repeat this exercise in March. | | |
| | 2009-02-18 | Doug Harebottle | | Atlasing milestones for Free State pentad | | Pentad 2645_2745 (Sasolburg) has just turned red and has become the Free State‘s fourth pentad with 25 or more cards. More significantly it is the only pentad in the Free State that has 200 or more species recorded, and also holds the provincial record for the highest no. of species recorded on a single card, 147, which was achieved in 10 hours of intensive atlasing between 27-30 November 2008. Dawie Kleynhans made a significant contribution to this coverage (22 cards) and together with the other observers (Gisela Ortner, Andrew Featherstone and Klaus Kreft) another baseline has been set for SABAP2. Our thanks to this band of atlasers for their efforts in carrying out surveys in this pentad and getting it to this first milestone. As Dawie says "Viva home patch atlasing". | | |
| | 2009-02-16 | Doug Harebottle | | SABAP2 at BirdLife SA‘s 80th AGM | | BirdLife South Africa‘s 80th Annual General Meeting takes place from 19-22 March in Phalaborwa and is hosted by the Phalaborwa Bird Club. A host of birding activities are on offer and SABAP2 will be there with a range of atlas activities. Together with Trish Strachan (KZN atlas coordinator) and John Sewards (Limpopo RAC) we will be arranging social get-together‘s for atlasers, atlas surveys in and around Phalaborwa (including KNP) and also conduct some atlas presentations on the why‘s and how‘s of atlasing. For a detailed look at the SABAP2 activities and information on how to register for the meeting click on the BLSA AGM advert at the bottom of the page. We look forward to meeting up with as many atlasers as possible in Phalaborwa! | | |
| | 2009-02-13 | Les Underhill | | 700 000 records | | At the 1800 update today, SABAP2 reached 700000 records in the database. If we can maintain current rates of progress, we should get to a million records sometime around the middle of June | | |
| | 2009-02-05 | Les Underhill | | Targets till 31 March | | During last year, we set up five measures which would summarize the progress of SABAP2, both "breadth" and "depth". They are on the website: go to "Summaries" on the left hand side menu, then click "Targets" from the sub-menu. We aimed to reach the three "breadth"measures by the end of January. We met two of the three targets. We reached one as early as last November, and another during January. There were two "depth" measures, but we did not set specific targets for them. We have now set new targets for all five measures, and aim to reach them by 31 March. In future we will set targets at two-month intervals. One of the breadth targets has been re-jigged; we are now aiming to get at least four pentads done per half degree grid cell. We are pleased that this target is already at 61.6%. Please read the background to the new targets on the website, and please help as much as you are able to help us reach them | | |
| | 2009-01-31 | Les Underhill | | Vaal Dam CWAC | | The Vaal Dam CWAC took place on 18 January. This annual event, initiated by BirdLife Vaal Dam, is sponsored by SASOL. The dam is split into 17 count areas, and all the waterbirds within each section are counted. This year, Rosemary Giraud, who coordinates the event, arranged the count sections so that as far as possible each section fell within a single pentad. Whereas the CWACers focused on counting the waterbirds, the atlasers listed all the species observed. Checklists were submitted for 12 pentads, five of them new - and made a substantial contribution to BASH. One species near the top of most lists was Grey-headed Gull. In these days of economic turmoil, we need to make our birding kilometres count for as many projects as possible | | |
| | 2009-01-28 | Doug Harebottle | | The PINK pentad revealed! | | Did anyone spot the pink pentad today? Pentad 2540_2815 (Gauteng) now has 101 checklists. Any pentad with 100+ checklists gets a PINK shading. A fantastic effort by everyone who contributed - keep this going. This is certainly going ‘deep‘ into a pentad...but is giving us an excellent baseline from which we will be able to monitor future changes. Which pentad will be next...keep a close eye on the coverage map! | | |
| | 2009-01-27 | Doug Harebottle | | Gauteng reach 100% coverage | | The 12h00 update saw Gauteng reach the magical 100% coverage mark. Well done to everyone who played a part in the getting Gauteng to this point. It was a well-deserved team effort. Special word of thanks to Ernst Retief and his committee and survey teams who managed to coordinate the last remaining surveys, some of which were in some really ‘difficult‘ localities. So what do Gauteng atlasers do now...well, seasonal coverage in the pentads could be looked at, and continuing to go ‘deep‘ definitely remains a priority...but perhaps one could venture to neighbouring provinces and start covering the gaps in those periphery areas. Keep up the great work team Gauteng...viva atlasing! | | |
| | 2009-01-26 | Doug Harebottle | | Gauteng nearing 100% coverage | | Gauteng has two pentads left to reach 100% coverage (at least one checklist submitted for each pentad). These two pentads are ‘booked‘ to be done so we are awaiting in anticipation when this magical figure will be reached. Watch this space ....
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| | 2009-01-20 | Doug Harebottle | | Half of QDGCs now with one or more pentads done | | Today we reached a significant target - half of all quarter-degree grid cells have at least one pentad surveyed. We had forecast to reach this target by the end of January but we have managed through the dedicated efforts of many atlasers (and through BASH) to get there just before then. Well done to everyone who contributed to this! The challenge now is to try and get to those virgin quarter-degree cells! This will more than likely mean traveling to some far and remote places but they could turn up some interesting species! | | |
| | 2009-01-14 | Les Underhill | | PINK Pentad | | ... within a week or two, a pentad will go PINK, because it will reach 100 checklists - this pentad currently has 96 checklists. Keep a close eye on the coverage map, and try to spot it! | | |
| | 2009-01-06 | Michael Brooks | | SABAP2 website problems | The website problems have been solved. I have been told the offending program has been patched to prevent the issue from repeating.
As reported to me:
Could you please change this to xx.xxx.xxx in all the connection strings as the connection to localhost is routed to xxx.xxx.xxx via an unstable unix2tcp program.
This might be related to the current issues you are experiencing.
Thanks for the patience! | | |
| | 2009-01-06 | Les Underhill | | Free State takes over the lead from Northern Cape | | Since the beginning of December, more new pentads have been atlased in the Free State than in any of the other provinces. Until a day ago, this honour belonged to the Northern Cape. 57 pentads have now been atlased for the first time in the Free State, compared to 54 in the Northern Cape. Mpumalanga has moved up into third place with 46 new pentads, followed by the Western Cape with 39. Special praise needs to go to the atlasers of Gauteng - at the start of December there were still 54 pentads in this province to be atlased, out of 271. Pentads left to last tend always to be the most difficult, for one reason or another. 29 of these 54 have now been covered and this province stands at 91% coverage. So Gauteng has only 25 pentads to go to reach 100%. The Gauteng achievement is a cause for real celebration | | |
| | 2009-01-05 | Les Underhill | | Website is temperamental | The three-hourly automatic updates on this website, which we have come to take for granted, depend on a whole bunch of computers and the network links between them all functioning perfectly. At the moment, one of the links is giving trouble, so the data on the external website (this one) has got corrupted. The internal website (which the external website is supposed to mirror) is working perfectly. We are doing our best to resolve the problem.
At the 2100 update this evening, there were 10676 checklists submitted, that‘s 87 submitted checklists in the day. 33 pentads were covered for the first time, the largest single day increase ever, taking coverage past 18.5%. The number of records increased by a record 5626, to 592666.
For those following progress with BASH, here are the 21h00 numbers: Active observers, 188 (94% of target); Cards submitted, 1071 (42.8%); Different pentads covered, 774 (51.6%), New pentads, 306 (an incredible 51.0%); Records submitted, 64454 (43.0%). We need all hands on deck (or rather, holding binoculars) over the next few weeks, to try to meet the somewhat ambitious targets we set ourselves. But they are certainly do-able. We are also hoping that atlasers will keep returning from their atlasing holidays with notebooks full of data which they will submit over the next few weeks (and that there are lots of days that are as productive as today has been). | | |
| | 2008-12-28 | Les Underhill | | Northern Cape takes the lead | | Since the beginning of December (ie since the beginning of BASH, the Big Atlasing Summer Holiday), the pace at which new pentads are being atlased has increased, as atlasers take the opportunities to atlas in remote pentads. It is especially pleasing to report that more new pentads have been done this month in the Northern Cape than in any other province "“ 38 pentads there have had their first coverage. Second place goes to Mpumalanga on 32, followed by the Free State and the Western Cape, both on 30. Gauteng has made great progress too, and is getting close to 90% coverage. Lots of atlasers are (like me) on holiday, with backlogs of data to submit. Even so, SABAP2 progress in December has been impressive. Keep am eye on the BASH targets on the top right corner of the home page, and please contribute whatever you are able to do to help us reach them. Thanks to all atlasers for their loyal support during 2008. Best wishes from the SABAP2 team for 2009. | | |
| | 2008-12-19 | Doug Harebottle | | 3000 pentads and counting.... | | We passed 3000 pentads today which pushes our coverage to just over 17%. Although we still have a way to go, we have seen a burst of acceleration over the past few months which has aided in reaching this level. Let‘s hope we can maintain this momentum and aim to be at 20% coverage by the end of summer. That amounts to about 460 new pentads to be surveyed between now and the end of March... which is one new pentad per observer over the next three months. Let‘s go for it! | | |
| | 2008-12-17 | Doug Harebottle | | New KZN atlas activities coordinator | | The project team is delighted to announce that Trish Strachan, based in Highflats in the KZN Midlands, has been nominated to take up a role as KZN activities coordinator on the KZN Regional Atlas Committee. Trish is an experienced atlaser and heads up Birdlife Sisonke branch of BLSA. Her role will be to assist KZN atlasers with all their atlas queries and coordinate atlas activities within the province. So, if you are a registered atlaser based in KZN and need any help or advice regarding SABAP2 please contact Trish directly on Tel: 039 8350086, Cell: 082 411 2708, Fax: 0866 853754 or Email: sabap2.kzn@futurenet.co.za | | |
| | 2008-12-15 | Doug Harebottle | | Links update and request for further links | | If you click on the ‘Links‘ item in the menu you will notice that we have added Luiperdskloof Game Lodge (pentad 2545_2855) to this section. We managed to submit the first list for this pentad during our visit to Ezemvelo Game Reserve for SAFRINGs 60th conference. We spent most of our time within this private lodge which lies in the stunning Wilge River valley and has some great birding. After discussions with lodge management about the project, it was agreed that atlasers will be able to carry out surveys within the lodge provided that prior contact is made with the lodge manager (see details in the Links page).
This kind of information is quite valuable especially if one is atlasing in new areas. Consequently, we would like to expand this section to incorporate information about similar venues within pentads which may have limited access. If you know of a private lodge or reserve which is willing to assist atlasers with surveys (free entry, reduced rates, etc.) please send us their contact details and a copy of their logo and we‘ll gladly advertise their facilities and services on our site. Information can be sent to doug.harebottle@uct.ac.za | | |
| | 2008-12-10 | Les Underhill | | Direct caterpillar, 24 pentads east-west, climbs 3000 metres | | Alan Manson and Victor Roberts teamed up to fill the missing segment and complete a direct caterpillar. It starts at the coast at Durban North, and then runs directly west to end up at the top of the Drakensberg escarpment at 3000m, at The Monk. Much of this caterpillar is double-lane highway! It is this kind of data that will help measure the turnover of species along an altitudinal gradient. Thanks, team, and do persevere with the building of caterpillars marching across the countryside! | | |
| | 2008-12-08 | Les Underhill | | 72 pentad caterpillar | | Thanks to Peter Lawson, who atlased two critical pentads over the weekend, there is now a "strict" east-west caterpillar from 26E to 32E. Have a look at the coverage map on the website, and you will find the caterpillar, running across North West, Gauteng and Mpmumalanga, from west of Klerksdorp to the Mozambique border in the Kruger National Park. It has 72 pentads. For a "strict" caterpillar, you need to be able to keep moving in one direction, but can step over the corners of pentads. A "straight line caterpillar" is even more difficult than a "strict caterpillar", because all the atlased pentads must be in a line. A "circuitous caterpillar" is the sloppy version of a caterpillar: for example, there is now a circuitous caterpillar of atlased pentads from Cape Point into the Northern Cape, but you have to go a long way round in the Western Cape to get there. All these caterpillars, in all their shapes, configurations and lengths represent great SABAP2 teamwork. | | |
| | 2008-12-02 | Les Underhill | | BASH - the Big Atlasing Summer Holiday - December ‘08 & January ‘09 | | The concept of Big Atlasing Summer Holiday (BASH) is explained near the top of the left hand side menu on the home page. The BASH counters are displayed on the top right hand corner of the home page. This is not a holiday from atlasing, it is about using the summer holidays to atlas. The BASH counters are measuring how much atlasing we do in these two months. This is the only opportunity we will have to set the baselines for the distributions of bird species this midsummer, so please atlas wherever you are and as often as you are able | | |
| | 2008-12-02 | Doug Harebottle | | New atlasing stories | | Eight new atlasing stories have been added to the website. Although some are a few months old they nevertheless provide some fascinating accounts of the experiences of some of our atlasers. The stories by Bryan Groom and Etienne Marais (both with photos) should hopefully inspire more families to get involved with the project, while Trish Starchan‘s trip to northern KZN, together with Tim Wood, provides a wonderful example of how dedicated and committed individuals can make a real difference in spreading the atlas message. Brian Steele-Drew‘s account of how he has gone ‘deep‘ into his own pentad again highlights how important it is to do regular surveys in one‘s home pentad(s)...and how subtle changes/patterns start emerging as a result of getting to know your home patch well....
Click on ‘Atlasing stories‘ in the left-hand menu to read the full stories... | | |
| | 2008-12-01 | Les Underhill | | All blue quarter degree grid cell | | John Carter and team at the Somerset West Bird Club have shifted their quarter degree grid cell to "all blue". Each of the nine pentads in 3418BB Somerset West now has 11 or more checklists. Since July, they have systematically visited each pentad at least once each month. The pentad in the northeast corner of the QDGC is mostly in the mountains, so it requires real determination to maintain regular coverage. This is our second "all blue" QDGC - the first was at Mooreesburg in the Swartland. Well done to the Somerset West Bird Club. | | |
| | 2008-11-29 | Les Underhill | | The first half million | | At the 0600 update today, SABAP2 reached 500 000 records submitted. The first quarter million records were reached in July this year, the 13th month of the project. The next quarter million were reached in November, the 17th month. The rate of arrival of records has increased steadily throughout the project (go to "Summaries" on the left hand side menu, click "Summary graph" to see this). The average daily rate at which records arrive now closely matches the rate during SABAP1, around 2700 records/day. Well done, team. | | |
| | 2008-11-29 | Les Underhill | | Gauteng reaches 80% coverage, and also goes "deep" | | Atlasers have visited 80% of the pentads in Gauteng at least once. There are probably few "easy" pentads left, and each represents a challenge as the Guateng team strives for 100%. Gauteng also has the "deepest" coverage of any province, with an average of 6.14 checklists per atlased pentad. The number of checklists per pentad is variable. Many pentads have between one and a three checklists (yellow and orange on the coverage map), with eight red pentads (25-49 checklists) and four purple pentads (more than 50 checklists, with a maximum of 76). Lots of data for a pentad is especially valuable, because it provides a solid baseline against which future change can be measured. Lots of data collected throughout the year and every year is also valuable, because it enables us to examine changes in the timing of migration. Timing of migration is predicted to react to climate change. So the pentads with lots of data are the pentads for which lots more data are very welcome!! | | |
| | 2008-11-28 | Les Underhill | | Welcome to our 400th atlaser | | Welcome to Richard Pearse, who has become the 400th observer to contribute checklists to SABAP2. His first checklist submitted was also the first for pentad 3315_2615, in the Eastern Cape. It helps build the caterpillar of atlased pentads from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth. Thanks, Richard, for getting involved and thanks also to the other 399 contributors who enable Richard to be the 400th! | | |
| | 2008-11-24 | Michael Brooks | | Announcing the News updater. | | This space will be used to bring you all the news and snippets from the SABAP2 project. These will be authored by the project team, and will include any news and updates from the field to the website. | | |
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