Latest news

Yesterday marked the launch of a new e-journal, Ornithological Observations - http://oo.adu.org.za/. This journal is published online, by BirdLife South Africa and the Animal Demography Unit at UCT and is of a semi-scientific nature. It is edited by Arnold van der Westhuizen, PhD student and ardent ADU/BLSA project participant.

Its main aim is for scientists and citizen scientists alike to submit interesting observations of bird related matters (behaviour, nesting activities, foraging behaviour, annotated checklists etc.) in a reader-friendly format that is accessible to the public and the scientific community. One regularly encounters interesting bird behaviours, or nesting habits, or movement patterns  and it is these anecdotal observations which often do not get into the broader scientific and popular literature. But by getting these observations published in a short, user-friendly format they contribute valuable information to our bird knowledge base that can be used in future editions of Roberts's Birds of southern Africa.

Submissions for OO are encouraged from southern Africa but articles and short papers can be submitted from anywhere around the world. Getting the article from submission to publication is hoped to be a quick process as papers will not be peer-reviewed but the editorial committee will ensure that a high-standard is maintained. Templates have been provided to make the writing process as streamlined as possible. And even if you do not want to write anything you can visit the site frequently for interesting reads on our birdlife.

For more information please visit the OO website. There are already two articles that can be viewed and downloaded as pdf files. These will give you a nice feel for the style and format that is used for OO submissions.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and making OO a successful media platform for birders and scientists!

Stan Madden has faithfully organized the waterbirds counts at Blesbokspruit since CWAC started. He reports on the most recent count: "The Blesbokspruit Winter CWAC count took place on the Sunday 25 July. The weather was good for this time of the year, a real mild winter morning with no ice or frost around. Participants gathered at the Marievale picnic area at 07h30 and counting commenced at about 08h00. Teams of counters turned out from the President Ridge and Cuckoo Bird Clubs, Ann de Jager and her band of birders at the Grootvaly on Blesbok Site, and also the many stalwart birders and helpers from the Springs-Nigel Branch of WESSA. The count was a great success and a good social occasion – particularly the 'Brunch Braai' after the count was over at 11h00. This year the hot soup, provided by Chris, was really enjoyed.

"A few details follow. We recorded 12 species of duck including 4 African Black Duck and 4 Cape Teal at Grootvaly on Blesbok, and 2 South African Shelduck at Marievale. 1451 Spur-winged Geese were counted most of these, 1223, were at Marievale. Flamingos: 64 Greater and 1 Lesser at Marievale and 15 Greater and 2 Lesser at the Anglo Site. We saw 3 African Marsh Harriers simultaneously at Grootvaly on Blesbok Site and another two further south at Marievale; one of those at Marievale was a juvenile. One African Jacana was recorded at Grootvaly on Blesbok Site, and 17 Pied Avocet and 16 Black-winged Stilt were counted at the Grootvaly Wetland Reserve. There were no Little Bitterns or Marsh Owls recorded. A total of 4179 birds were recorded which is a small increas on last winter's number of 3986."

The ADU salutes Stan for his huge contribution to maintaining these regular surveyus, and especial thanks to the big teams of counters who continue to make this occasion the success it is.

The Wader Study Group Bulletin is published by the International Wader Study Group (IWSG) three times a year. The latest issue of the bulletin has just been produced and it contains a particularly interesting set of papers. One of the papers has ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz as lead author. (The IWSG also holds an annual conference; this year the conference is in Lisbon, Portugal from 2–3 October and at least two members of the ADU plan to attend.)

The new paper presents the results obtained as a result of years of intensive wader ringing. It deals with the primary moult of second-year Wood Sandpipers:
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Taylor PB 2010. The path to adult dress: primary moult in second-year Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. Wader Study Group Bulletin 117: 35–40.
The abstract is below. This paper is the third of a trilogy of papers dealing with the primary moult of the Wood Sandpiper. The other two papers dealt with the moult of adult and first-year Wood Sandpipers respectively. The citations to these papers are
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Gustowska A, Taylor PB 2009. Extended primary moult as an adaptation of adult Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola to their use of freshwater habitats of southern Africa. Ardea 97: 271–280.
and
Remisiewicz M, Tree AJ, Underhill LG, Taylor PB 2010. Rapid or slow moult? The choice of primary moult strategy by immature Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. Journal for Ornithology 151: 429–441.
The pdfs for all three papers are available from Magda.

ABSTRACT: The path to adult dress: primary moult in second-year Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa. We know little about the primary moult of waders in their second year of life, especially migrants. Remisiewicz et al. (2009, 2010) have provided details on the primary moult of immature and adult Wood Sandpipers Tringa glareola in southern Africa, but there is no information on the primary moult of second-year birds. Most Wood Sandpipers leave southern Africa for their northern breeding grounds when they are 10–11 months old, so migration separates the subsequent cycles in their primary moult. We chose this species to determine if the pattern of the first complete primary moult of waders during their second year of life differs from that of adults. We analysed the primary moult scores of 97 sub-adult (13- to 20-months-old) Wood Sandpipers obtained in southern Africa by using the Underhill–Zucchini moult model to estimate the timing and duration of moult for all 10 primaries combined and for P1 and P2 individually. Sub-adult Wood Sandpipers were observed in southern Africa between June and December, when, by about 19 months of age, they become indistinguishable from adults. Half of the sub-adults showed two generations of their fully grown primaries after a previous partial moult. All 54 sub-adults in active moult started at P1 and progressed outwards to P10. The starting date of moult for all sub-adults estimated using all 10 primaries was 2 September, 13 days later than for adults. The sub-adults’ primary moult was estimated to last on average 134 days, which did not differ significantly from the 131 days in adults. The rate primary feather mass is deposited did not differ between the sub-adults and the adults. Moult of P1 and P2 in sub-adults started 10–11 days later than in adults, but overlapped in the same manner as in adults. The number of primaries grown simultaneously with subsequently moulted primaries and the size of the wing gap in sub-adults resembled the pattern in adults. Sub-adults finished their primary moult on 15 January on average, 15 days later than adults. We suggest that sub-adult Wood Sandpipers catch up with the timing of the adults when they are 19–20 months old, when they finish their first complete moult of primaries, before the pre-migratory fattening period in February–March.