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Bird ringing at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp : 23 to 27 August 2025

Posted on 28/08/2025 by Les Underhill

We were bird ringing at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp, at the peak of the spring wildflower season. We didn’t do any dedicated trips to the special touristy flower spectacles. But we were surrounded by flowers during our daily bird ringing sessions.

Over the five days, we didn’t quite make 200 birds handled. The total here shows 192 birds, of 28 species.

Species	Count
Common Quail	1
Speckled Pigeon	3
Ring-necked Dove	1
Laughing Dove	12
White-backed Mousebird	5
Karoo Lark	1
Brown-throated Martin	1
African Red-eyed Bulbul	5
Karoo Chat	2
Familiar Chat	2
Karoo Scrub Robin	1
Long-billed Crombec	1
Levaillant’s Cisticola	1
Namaqua Warbler	3
Fiscal Flycatcher	1
Southern Fiscal	2
Red-winged Starling	1
House Sparrow	1
Cape Sparrow	40
Cape Weaver	35
Southern Masked Weaver	23
Southern Red Bishop	37
Black-headed Canary	1
White-throated Canary	1
Yellow Canary	1
Cape Bunting	2
Karoo Thrush	7
Cape White-eye	1
Totals: 28 Species	192

Saturday afternoon and Sunday, 23 and 24 August

We had a few hours to ring after we arrived. We set up mist nets at Botuin. Lots of daisies!

Cape Weaver, gently held above the daisies by the mist net,

The grey flanks and the yellow eye-ring point to this being a Karoo Thrush rather than Olive Thrush. By the time you get as far north from Cape Town as Vanrhynsdorp, the vast majority of thrushes are Karoo Thrushes.

During the late afternoon ringing session on Saturday and on Sunday morning, we caught 61 birds of 14 species in the Botuin gardens. Cape Sparrow was the most numerous, with 18 birds.

Monday, 25 August

This looks like an early start, but by ringing standards it was quite late. Sunrise was a little after seven o’clock, so we got almost two hours more sleep than we would get in midsummer.

We created a curved line of nine long mist nets, completely out in the open …

At the Lark Site, we are happy if our total number of birds handled reaches double figures. We exceeded the target by 10%, with 11 birds, of nine species. Is this worth the effort? The answer is an emphatic yes. Dieter Oschadleus has ringed 420 species. He added two ringing lifers during the morning: Common Quail and Black-headed Canary.

Here is a set of Common Quail photographs!

Salome Willemse, citizen scientist and bird ringer, and our host at Botuin, timed it perfectly to bring breakfast at exactly the moment we caught the Common Quail.

The Black-headed Canary didn’t get as many photographs as the Common Quail.

This Cape Bunting was a retrap. It had been ringed on 5 February 2024, 17 months ago.

Even though we call this the Lark Site, it is mainly a place where we hope to catch larks, rather than catch them with regularity. Fortunately we got a lark. This is Karoo Lark. It is a poorly known species, with remarkably little published about any aspect of its biology, apart from taxonomy!

The flowers at the Lark Site were impressive.

This is Gansogie [= goose eye] Cotula barbata. It’s an annual herb that flowers in August and September.

This is the classic Namaqua Daisy Dimorphotheca sinuata. The Afrikaans name is Jakkalsblom. The caterpillar has not yet had a nibble of the petals.

This plant is carnivorous. It is one of the many species of Sundew. The scientific name is Drosera trinervia. In Afrikaans, it is both Sonnedou, the direct translation of sundew, and Snotrosie [=’little snot rose’]

It is hard to know where to walk when the carpet underfoot looks like this!

Southern Meadow Whites Pontia helice were actively visiting flowers. This flower is Felicia australis, Sambreeltjie [= little umbrella].

Tuesday, 26 August

At the Vanryhynsdorp Sewage Works, the target is 100 birds in a day. That is a bit optimistic, but do-able.

Each pond at the Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works has a rope across it. If you fall in (and the plastic that lines the edges is notoriously slippery), you swim to the rope, and pull yourself out. There is a cold shower handy!

Mist nets up by dawn. The focus is on birds arriving and leaving the reed beds in this section of one of the ponds.

Most of the male Southern Red Bishops were in full, or almost full, breeding plumage.

Given that the incubation period is 15 days, and the fledging period is 18 days, the egg out of which this newly fledged Southern Fiscal hatched must have been laid early in July.

This was our only Red-winged Starling. It is a male because the head is black. What is unusual about Red-winged Starlings is that the juveniles look like males, whereas in most species juveniles look like females. Vanrhynsdorp is near the northern edge of the range on the western side of South Africa.

Our total for the morning at the sewage works was 87, so we scored a credible 87%. There were four retraps. All had been ringed in 2023, and three of the four had been ringed at Botuin, which is 1.7 km away (see map below).

This is a Cape Weaver nest from a year ago. It was so well made that it has survived the buffeting of a year’s weather. There are new nest close by. This nest is directly above the spot at the sewage works where we usually set up our ringing station. Bird rings come as strings on thin plastic tubes. When the end of the tube gets annoyingly far from the next ring to be used, the plastic gets cut. This piece of plastic woven into the nest looks suspiciously like ringers’ litter. But closer inspection shows that, whatever its purpose was, this is not the designs used for strings of rings.

Even at the sewage works the flowers were excellent!

The drive from Botuin to the Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works starts by traveling back into the town, and then out on the R27. But the Google map shows that the direct distance is 1.68 km.

We celebrated a successful expedition with homemade pizzas!

Assemble your own pizza!

We only made one decadent chocolate and marshmallow pizza, and that was for dessert!

Thanks …

Botuin Cottages provided a superb base for the trip. We deeply appreciated Salome Willemse’s outstanding hospitality, from breakfasts brought to us in the field to delicious dinners .Skipper Boks and the staff at the Vanryhnsdorp Sewage Works were extremely helpful.

A list of trips with reports like this one can be found here. If you would like to join us, here is the list of upcoming events. There is an article about the value of bird ringing to conservation and research here.

Archive/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds

Bird ringing at Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory : 5 to 12 February 2025

Posted on 18/08/2025 by Les Underhill

Where is the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory?

The Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory is in southern Namibia, along the B4, the main road between Keetmanshoop, via Aus, to Lüderitz. From South Africa there are two sensible routes, both about 400 km from the border. You either enter Namibia at Noordoever, north along the N7 from Cape Town, with the road becoming the B1 in Namibia. Turn west onto the B4 at Keetmanshoop. Or you cross at Oranjemund, take the C13 via Rosh Pinah to Aus, and turn east on the B4. All these roads are tar and in excellent condition. The bird observatory is at the Alte Kalköfen Lodge, and it is about 2 km south of the B4.

Map showing where Alte Kalköfen bird observatory is located

The Alte Kalköfen Lodge is outstanding. Frikkie and Hilde Mouton are exceptional hosts, the accommodation is comfortable, and the meals superb.

Alte Kalköfen bird observatory --- this is the Ols Lime Kiln

This is the Alte Kalköfen, the old lime kiln. This is the structure that gives the lodge, and the bird observatory, its name.

Gurib River: Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

This is classified as river, known as the Gurib River. In its normal state, it is dry. But when there is a big thunderstorm anywhere in the catchment, it flows impressively for anything between a few days to a week. There has been a few millimetres of rain here, and within days there is this flush of green. Unless the initial rain is followed up by more within a week, it shrivels and dies.

Gurib River in the distance: Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

The Gurib River lies within the band of trees in the distance. The Alte Kalköfen Lodge consists of the row of chalets just beyond the river. The area lies in the ecotone known as Dwarf Shrub Savanna, between the Namib Desert to the west and Kalahari Savanna to the east. There is a variety of natural habitats: sand dunes, sandy grass veld, karoo scrub and dry thorn veld, and the “forest” of camel thorn trees along river. The area around the lodge has gardens, and water. There is a grove of palm trees (below). In the years when they bear fruit, they attract lots of birds!

What species did we ring?

Acacia Pied Barbet. Counting from the outside, there are seven old primary feathers, Then one that is three-quarters grown. Inside that are two new primaries. So the bird ringer would score the primary moult as 55400 00000; scores of 5 for the two new primaries, score of 4 for the growing primary, and seven 0s for the old primaries.The moult score is recorded in the order that the feathers grow, from the inside to the outside.

Kalahari Scrub-robin Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

The distinctive tail pattern of the Kalahari Scrub-robin

This Cape Sparrow is making a heavy investment in moult!

Rufous-cheeked Nightjar : Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

The wing of a Rufous-cheeked Nightjar.

Details of the tail of the Rufous-cheeked Nightjar. Only bird ringers have the privilege of seeing this component of bird biology.

Swimming pool Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

We put a mist net over the swimming pool. You need to do visual work to see it. The target species was Little Swift. We caught 22 here!

The width of the white rump of this Little Swift is 15.4 mm.

These are the species we handled while we were at the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory. The species in red have links to structured species texts on the website of the Biodiversity and Development Institute. The full list of species with these structured texts is here.

Species	Count
Namaqua Sandgrouse	2
Speckled Pigeon	7
Ring-necked Dove	3
Laughing Dove	3
Rufous-cheeked Nightjar	2
Little Swift	22
White-backed Mousebird	7
Acacia Pied Barbet	1
African Red-eyed Bulbul	1
Mountain Chat	1
Familiar Chat	7
Kalahari Scrub Robin	4
Chestnut-vented Warbler	3
Marico Flycatcher	4
Dusky Sunbird	1
Cape Sparrow	54
Scaly-feathered Finch	20
Southern Masked Weaver	7
Green-winged Pytilia (Melba Finch)	1
White-throated Canary	1
Yellow Canary	11
22 species	Total 162 birds

Is the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory important?

Yes!

The most important contribution that the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory aims to make is in the study of nomadic bird species. Broadly speaking these have been neglected, largely because they are difficult to study. The Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory will tackle this challenge.

There is a paper in the journal Biodiversity Observations which explains the value of the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory expansively. It is available freely; it is Open Access. The title is the Opening of the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory in southern Namibia, February 2025.

Are there some photographs from the opening ceremony for the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory?

Here is a sample!

Opening of Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

Even though it was not a big event, it was an important one. We gathered outside one of the hides at the Alte Kalköfen Lodge; there is a thin blue ribbon blocking the entrance! We made speeches appropriate to the occasion, cut the ribbon …

Cutting the ribbon Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

… and had a party …

Party Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

Here is the logo of the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory, which is also attached inside the hide in the photographs above!

Were we blind to all the other animals, except birds?

There is an amazing array of biodiversity at the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory …

The Alte Kalköfen Lodge has an area of 20,500 ha (more easily visualized as 22 km east to west and between 10 km and 15 km north to south). The large mammals on the property include Gemsbok and Giraffe. They regularly walk past the lodge in the bed of the Gurib River.

This moth is a Cream-striped Owl Cyligramma latona. This one was about 7 cm across.

On the left is a Giant Antlion Palpares immensus. It is is one of the largest antlion species in the world, a species of dry habitats. It is widespread in Namibia, and its range extends northwards into southern Angola, and southwards into the dry western parts of South Africa, mainly the Northern Cape. It has a structured species text on the BDI website. On the right is Pantala Pantala flavescens, also known as the Wandering Glider. This is one of the world’s most fascinating dragonflies. The only way to explain its patterns of occurrence in India and Africa is to include a multigenerational migration across the northwestern Indian Ocean in its annual cycle! This Open Access paper in the Journal of Tropical Biology describes how this works: Do dragonflies migrate across the western Indian Ocean?

The swimming pool hosted a good collection of Orange-winged Dropwings Trithemis kirbyi. This is probably the commonest dragonfly of the arid west of southern Africa.

When are we going back to Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory?

The plan is to return in January-February 2026. Our thinking is to support Roy Earlé, the coordinator of the bird observatory, by having a small group of ringers (and trainee ringers) there continuously for a period of several weeks. We envisage that people will be leaving and arriving in a staggered pattern, so it doesn’t happen that one group of ringers is replaced totally by the next. Duration of stay is optional, from a few days to a few weeks!

On our next visit, we are hoping to be able to stay in the Sandverhaar farmhouse, photographs below …

What happens when the rain comes?

Rainfall in this region is erratic. The daily “wetness index” can be visualized as a line through time that has occasional upward steps, and then long periods during which it fades gently downwards as the sun slowly sucks the moisture out of everything. Ultimately the downward curve bottoms out and becomes almost flat. Then we have drought conditions, which can last for a bunch of years!

We had a few good showers during our visit, but really good rains arrived soon afterwards. There are two photographs and two videos below …

Lightning

Rain Alte Kalköfen bird observatory February 2025

Real rain

,,, and the Gurib River becomes a river! And then it becomes a river flowing with enthusiasm …

… this time, it flowed for seven days. That;s the record for the past decade; previously it has flowed for two or three days. Most of this water hit the ground many kilometres away in the mountains to the north.. Ultimately, its destination is the Atlantic Ocean at Oranjemund, but it gets there via the Fish River Canyon and the Orange River.

Before the B4 national road was built (about 2 km upstream from here) there was just the one bridge (shown in the video) over the Gurib River, The old main road from Keetmanshoop to the coast at Lüderitz, and the railway line, shared this bridge!

There is a list of blogs for BDI ringing events here.

Future BDI events are listed here. Keep an eye on this to find details of our next visit to the Alte Kalköfen Bird Observatory.

Archive/Biodiversity/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science/Trip report

Bird ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA : 9 to 14 August 2025

Posted on 15/08/2025 by Les Underhill

This is a report on our seventh bird ringing expedition to the Nuwejaars Wetlands. We were here from Saturday 9 to Thursday 14 August 2025, five nights. This seems to have become a standard length for these trips!

On Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning, we ringed around the werf at our accommodation at Hazevlakte. The weather was not kind, with occasional squalls of rain and and regular blusters of wind. It was “clearing showers”, and by Sunday afternoon the wind had faded and the sun emerged.

There are spots in and around the werf where mist nets are sheltered from the wind, and they did pretty well, considering the conditions.

Although it still felt like winter, spring must be in the air ….

Southern Red Bishop - first trace of breeding plumage - Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

… because this red feather on this male Southern Red Bishop is the start of breeding plumage. When spring finally arrives properly, this bird will be among the first to be ready to show off his bold black and red plumage to the females.

Red-billed Quelea : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

This Red-billed Quelea, mistnetted on the werf at Nuwejaars, is the first we have ringed on our seven ringing trips to the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA over the past year. It is a vagrant to the Agulhas Plain, with only a handful of previous sightings, the first on a SABAP2 checklist in 2011. It is a species to keep an eye on. Sir Clive Elliott, the first ringing coordinator employed at SAFRING, went on to co-edit an authoritative book about the quelea, called Africa’s Bird Pest …

Cover to Arica's bird pest. Book by Clive Elliott. Red-billed Quelea

We don’t need quelea populations to reach pest proportions in a region which produces wheat and other grain crops.

Southern Fiscal head and bill : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

This Southern Fiscal was a retrap. It was ringed on our first visit here on 7 October last year. It was also retrapped here on 20 March this year. A resident!

On Monday morning we ringed on the northern edge of the flood plain of the Nuwejaars River. At dawn it looked like this…

… and in the bright winter sun, a rich texture is added to the mosaic of flood plain habitats …

… we need to remind ourselves that a few years ago this was a tangle of alien vegetation, and has been rehabilitated by the dedicated team of staff of the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA.

Yellow Bishop : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

This male Yellow Bishop is also feeling the impact of spring on the horizon, and is starting to get his breeding plumage. The head is looking untidy as the black feathers start to grow.

Black Crake : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

The first of three Black Crakes which we ringed during the expedition.

African Pied Starling : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

Although they are not particularly wetland birds, this African Pied Starling was mistnetted while commuting across the flood plain. Close up, the fleshy yellow structure of the gape is clear, and the creamy white eye.

Late on Monday afternoon, we set up nets at a patch of planted proteas and adjacent fynbos.

The photo above illustrates why mist nets work. At this angle, the net between the first and second poles is almost invisible. The net between the second and third poles is conspicuous because we are looking at it almost end on. The nets are “furled” overnight. This makes it impossible for them to catch bats, owls, nightjars and anything else that flies in the night.

We were back early on Tuesday morning, and opened the nets, and did not have long to wait …

Malachite Sunbird head : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

… in the fynbos habitat, Malachite Sunbird was one of the species we anticipated. We caught five.

Bar-throated Apalis : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

Another white-eyed bird, Bar-throated Apalis.

There were only a handful of open flowers in the protea stand, so we did not mist net any Cape Sugarbirds. There were only a handful still present.

On Wednesday morning ringed at the section of floodplain on the farm Moddervlei. We had put up mist nets (and furled them) the evening before …

… and here is Dieter Oschadleus returning from opening one of the mist nets over quite deep water. The poles are just visible over his right shoulder.

Tools of the trade : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

Tools of the ringing trade!

Another Black Crake : Bird ringing Nuwejaars Wetlands August 2025

Black Crake number two, of three that we ringed!

This measurement, known as “total head length”, is 50.6 mm on the dial callipers. Total head length is a more repeatable measurement than “bill length”.

The crakes were appropriately celebrated with a slab of chocolate!

Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area: African Marsh Harrier trail

Two of the objectives of this expedition were to get a feel for how our existing ringing sites worked in the depths of winter, and also to explore new potential sites. On Wednesday afternoon we had a good recce at this site, along the African Marsh Harrier Trail of the Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area. We found excellent habitat and great ringing sites. This was where the snipes had moved to! We will set up mist nets in this area on our next visit, which is 19 to 24 September 2025.

After a short ringing session at the Hazevlakte werf, we travelled back to Cape Town on Thursday morning.

Dieter produced this table of birds handled:

Species	Count
Black Crake	3
Speckled Mousebird	1
Cape Bulbul	5
Lesser Swamp Warbler	4
Little Rush Warbler	1
Bar-throated Apalis	1
Levaillant’s Cisticola	1
Southern Fiscal	3
Southern Boubou	1
Pied Starling	6
Malachite Sunbird	5
Southern Double-collared Sunbird	7
House Sparrow	6
Cape Sparrow	1
Cape Weaver	60
Southern Masked Weaver	17
Red-billed Quelea	1
Southern Red Bishop	19
Yellow Bishop	5
Cape White-eye	4
Karoo Prinia	1
Totals: 21 species	152

There were 28 retraps of birds ringed on previous ringing visits here. Amazingly, there were 11 retraps from our first visit here in early October last year. Nine of the 11 were Cape Weavers, one was a Cape Sparrow and one was the Southern Fiscal featured above.

Only two of the previous six trips to Nuwejaars Wetlands have blogs! They are the trips from 7 to 11 April 2025, and from 30 May to 4 June 2025. There is a list of all earlier trips with blogs here.

Future BDI events are listed here.

We are grateful for the support of the team at the Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area, Ross Kettles and Erica Brink. Thanks to Karen and Con Neethling for the warm welcome, once again, to the accommodation on the farm Hazevlakte. Thanks to Con and Liohan Giliomee for permission to ring on their farms.

Archive/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science

Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei : 21 December 2024

Posted on 24/07/2025 by Les Underhill

On Saturday 21 December 2024, we invited all the bird ringers in Cape Town to celebrate a year of enjoying birds. It was an special opportunity for the bird ringers to meet and chat informally, and share experiences. The format was bird ringing followed by brunch!

We set up mist nets from 05h00 onwards, at Frogmore Estate, on the western side of Zandvlei. Sunrise is early in the middle of summer.

Unfortunately, we chose a windy day for the event, with a tough southeaster howling. In spite of that, we mist netted some interesting birds. Pride of place probably went to a Pied Kingfisher. Three warbler species in the hand on one windy morning followed close behind.

Lesser Swamp Warbler Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei

Among the warblers were both an adult and a young Lesser Swamp Warbler. The adult, on the left, has a more saturated brown eye colour than the young bird, on the right. A subtle difference!

Two of the four Lesser Swamp Warblers were retraps. Both had been ringed at this site, one on 30 April 2016 (8.5 years previously, and the other on 23 March 2019 (5.5 years previously). We also retrapped a Little Rush Warbler, ringed here on 9 October 2021, just over three years previously. These retraps make a contribution to survival rate estimates. Neither of the African Reed Warblers were retraps!

Pied Kingfisher Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei

The Pied Kingfisher.

There was lots of time to try to get behind the shelter of the car, and do what was actually the most important activity of the day, talk to each other!

In spite of the adverse conditions, we mistnetted some interesting birds:

Species	Count
Pied Kingfisher	1
Lesser Swamp Warbler	4
African Reed Warbler	2
Little Rush Warbler	2
Cape Sparrow	3
Cape Weaver	7
Southern Masked Weaver	2
Yellow Bishop	1
8 species	Total 22 birds

After the ringing, we headed to Richard and Sue Gie’s home on the eastern side of Zandvlei, at Marina da Gama. Richard scrambled an ostrich egg. The group of people was not small, but we all got a decent helping!

Ostrich egg, on the verge of being opened at Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei

Besides the scrambled ostrich egg, it was a bring and share event. There were enough people to make a serious dent in the spread below:

Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei, with emphasis on the brunch

The consensus was that we need to do this kind of gathering more frequently!

Colin Jackson, visiting from A Rocha Kenya, echoed everyone feelings when he wrote in the WhatsApp group set up to coordinate the event: “THANK you to those who organised yesterday’s event. It was great seeing old friends again and meeting new ones. The awesome brunch spread was one to remember.”

Thank you, Sue and Richard Gie, for your very special hospitality. Bird ringing and brunch at Zandvlei met all its objectives, and needs repetition!

Archive/Biodiversity/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science/Site report/Vanrhynsdorp

Bird ringing at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp : 29 March to 4 April 2025

Posted on 13/07/2025 by Les Underhill

We had neglected our Vanrhynsdorp ringing sites since November last year, so this visit was overdue! You can read the report on that trip here. This blog summarizes the bird ringing at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp, March-April 2025. Vanryhnsdorp is on the N7 national road, about half way between Cape Town and Namibia.

Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025 — Busy time for ringing. The stoep at Botuin makes an excellent base for ringing at the many sites tucked away in a diversity of habitats on the 5-ha property: flower garden, vegetable garden, olive orchard, drinking places, lucerne field, trees for weavers to nest in, etc.

The table below shows that we handled 399 birds of 53 species. If you click on any of the species in red, you get taken to the structured text for the species on the BDI website. Try a few species, and see how these texts are structured, with the most important information about the species first. We are slowly expanding the number of species for which there are structured texts.

We handled lots of sparrows, weavers, bishops and doves. This is a good thing, because it is for these species that we will get lots of retraps, and be able to estimate high quality survival rates. The data we collect from the bird-in-the-hand is especially valuable; these include age, sex, weight, measurements and moult. We also take lots of photographs. These are valuable for the production of visual ageing guides.

Species	Number
Yellow-billed Duck	1
Cape Teal	11
Pale Chanting Goshawk	2
Cape Spurfowl	1
Three-banded Plover	2
Blacksmith Lapwing	1
Speckled Pigeon	1
Red-eyed Dove	2
Ring-necked Dove	1
Laughing Dove	48
White-backed Mousebird	8
Red-faced Mousebird	1
Malachite Kingfisher	1
African Hoopoe	1
Karoo Lark	1
Large-billed Lark	3
Red-capped Lark	1
Rock Martin	1
Brown-throated Martin	1
African Red-eyed Bulbul	6
Karoo Chat	3
Familiar Chat	3
Ant-eating Chat	3
African Stonechat	1
Cape Robin-chat	2
Karoo Scrub Robin	9
Yellow-bellied Eremomela	2
Rufous-eared Warbler	2
Grey-backed Cisticola	2
Levaillant’s Cisticola	3
Namaqua Warbler	4
Chestnut-vented Warbler	4
Fairy Flycatcher	1
Fiscal Flycatcher	2
Cape Wagtail	8
Southern Fiscal	3
Bokmakierie	3
Common Starling	3
Pied Starling	1
Southern Double-collared Sunbird	3
House Sparrow	10
Cape Sparrow	70
Cape Weaver	35
Southern Masked Weaver	48
Southern Red Bishop	24
Common Waxbill	2
Cape Siskin	1
White-throated Canary	9
Yellow Canary	2
Streaky-headed Canary	1
Cape Bunting	21
Cape White-eye	13
Karoo Prinia	7
Totals 53 species	399

The remainder of this blog consists of photos of two of the ringing sites, and then a selection of head and shoulders of birds-in-the-hand.

Ringing places 1 : Gifberg Larksite

For most ringers, the favourite place in the district is the “Larksite”. This is in spite of the fact that if the ringing total reaches double figures we are ecstatic! We keep going back to this site for two reasons. It is the only place where we get to see a number of species in-the-hand. Secondly, it is so harshly beautiful, and every time we go it is different.

The “Larksite” starts where the disturbance ends, right up against the base of the Gifberg. There, the agricultural impact stops, and vegetation starts to become natural.

Rainbow at Larksite - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

During this visit, we had an impressive thunderstorm. We got caught out in the rain in the late afternoon putting the mistnets up for the next morning.

Sunrise at Larksite - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Arriving at the Larksite before dawn

Larksite - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Looking northwest towards the town of Vanrhysndorp, there is still rain hanging in the air.

In spite of the heavy downpour, the reality is that the preceding six months have been hot and dry, and the landscape is pretty parched.

This table gives numbers of birds handled at the Gifberg Larksite. 72 birds of 25 species. The number of ringing trips there is getting close to 10! The 18 species in bold are rarely, if ever, caught at our other ringing sites in the district. That is why we keep going back to this “unproductive” site. Unproductive in terms of quantity, not of quality!

Species	Number
Namaqua Dove	3
White-backed Mousebird	1
Karoo Lark	3
Large-billed Lark	6
Spike-heeled Lark	2
Grey-backed Sparrow-lark	6
Red-capped Lark	2
Red-eyed Bulbul	1
Karoo Chat	2
Capped Wheatear	1
Familiar Chat	2
Sickle-winged Chat	3
Karoo Scrub Robin	5
Yellow-bellied Eremomela	1
Rufous-eared Warbler	4
Grey-backed Cisticola	1
Southern Double-collared Sunbird	1
Cape Weaver	1
Red-billed Quelea	2
Southern Red Bishop	3
White-throated Canary	9
Yellow Canary	3
Lark-like Bunting	2
Cape Bunting	5
Karoo Prinia	3
Total: 25 species (18 in bold)	72

Ringing places 2 : Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works

There is only one photo of our second favourite ringing site in the vicinity of Botuin!

Birders, ringers included, are sewage works enthusiasts. There are probably people who keep life lists of the sewage works at which they have birded. This photograph shows the high-energy, business part of the sewage works at Vanryhnsdorp. At this spot, the impact on eyes and nose is not good. But most of the real work of the sewage works is done quietly, efficiently and unobstrusively out on the pans, by sun and by microbes, and the water is rehabilitated. Out on the pans, the waterbirds make a negative contribution to the sole objective of the sewage works from the perspective of management, but, from the perspective of ringers, make a positive contribution.

Some birds

Yellow-billed Duck - Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works. Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Yellow-billed Duck, ringed at the Vanryhnsdorp Sewage Works. We also caught Red-billed Teal on this visit.

Ant-eating Chat - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

This is how the white in the wing of the Ant-eating Chat actually works. Larksite

Cape Butning - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Cape Bunting. Larksite

Bokmakieire. Larksite

Cape Siskin - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Cape Siskin, with its white-tipped tail. Larksite

Large-billed Lark - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Large-billed Lark. The yellow base to the bill is diagnostic. Now you can see how it works. Larksite

Rufous-eared Warbler. Larksite

Roc Kestrel - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Rock Kestrel

Mousebirds - Botuin- Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

These are the two mousebirds in the area: White-backed Mousebird and Red-faced Mousebird.

Cape Robin-chat. In the garden at Botuin

Southern Fiscal - Bird ringing at Botuin Vanrhynsdorp March-April 2025

Southern Fiscal at Botuin. That beak is a dangerous weapon.

Wrap

There is a set of reports about previous BDI ringing events on this website. There is a list of upcoming BDI events here.

There is a discussion on the value of bird ringing to research and conservation here.

The team of ringers for this trip consisted of Dieter Oschadleus, Dembo Jatta, Jade Wilding, Oliver Fox, Roger Walsh and myself. Jade, Oliver and Roger were visiting ringers from the UK. They are intensely involved in the Kartong Bird Observatory in The Gambia and transferred to us lots of skills gained in The Gambia and the UK. Dembo is also from The Gambia, and had just completed an MSc in Conservation Biology at the FitzPatrick Institute.

We are hugely grateful to Salome Willemse for hosting us at Botuin. It is an amazing place.

Archive/Biodiversity Observations/Site report

Researcher heaven : publications on biodiversity on Robben Island

Posted on 01/07/2025 by Les Underhill

Imagine. You are a new postgraduate student on Robben Island. You know you have lots of predecessors, and that you need to read up on all the research has already been done. We have news for you. You can easily download electronic copies of all the publications.of these researchers onto your computer! You are in researcher heaven.

You can download the Excel spreadsheet of all these papers here. It lists more than 200 publications. The total size is a shade under 4GB. It includes papers, theses, honours projects, reports, etc. The focus is mainly on birds, because most of the research has related to seabirds. But we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Once you have the spreadsheet downloaded, it empowers you to do sorts on the fields that interest you.

Unfortunately, because many of the publications are not Open Access, we are not able to simply upload the publications to a website from which you can download them. There are complete sets of the pdfs of the publications at the University of the Western Cape-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives and at the Niven Library, Fitzpatrick Institute, University of Cape Town. Currently, the contact people are André Mohammed and Janine Dunlop, respectively. There are also a complete set of the pdfs with the seabird researchers at the Branch: Oceans and Coasts of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Cape Town (contact Makhudu Masotla). There is set at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall, UK (contact Richard Sherley). I can also send you a set of papers using WeTransfer (contact les<at>thebdi.org).

We will endeavor to keep the spreadsheet up-to-date, so that whenever you download it, you get a current version. Likewise, we will try to make sure that the sets of pdfs remain up-to-date. It will help if you alert me to new papers, and send me a pdf. If you find glitches in the spreadsheet, please also let me know.

The blog is written in conjunction with a paper in the journal Biodiversity Observations. The paper provides more background to this exercise, and is available here.

This photo was taken on 22 June 2000, two days after the iron-ore carrier, called the Treasure, sank. Oil drifted in the direction of Robben Island, and African Penguins were covered in oil as they returned to the colony. They were transported to SANCCOB, stabilized (they are suffering from petrochemical poisoning) cleaned, held in captivity while their waterproofing is restored, and released. The banner photo to this blog was taken from the spotter plane that flew daily to check the position of the oil spill in the ocean. A lot of the publications in this collection relate, in one way or another, to this event.

Archive/Biodiversity/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science/Karoo

Bird ringing course at New Holme : 9 to 15 September 2024

Posted on 01/07/2025 by Les Underhill

The BDI’s ninth bird ringing course, and the fourth at New Holme, was held at the New Holme Nature Lodge, in the heart of the Karoo, between Hanover and Colesburg, about 700 km from both Johannesburg and 700 km from Cape Town. This was the team:

Team at Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

We have ringed at a variety of sites on the farm New Holme multiple times since our first ringing trip here in 2019. Three of the 87 birds ringed in November 2019 were retrapped during the 2024 course. The most interesting was the single Southern Fiscal ringed during the 2019 trip on 12 November. It was retrapped three times in 2022: on 29 March, on 9 April and during the ringing course 1 November. In 2023 it was retrapped on 2 September. It was retrapped again during this ringing course on 10 September. The original ringing and the five retraps have all been in the gardens surrounding New Holme Nature Lodge.

The table below shows the numbers of birds ringed or retrapped during the course. Those in red and underlined have structured species texts on the BDI website. Click on them. and you are transported to the species text! The total number of retraps was 70.

Species number	…	New Holme and surrounds	Windpump	En route (Leeugamka and Three Sisters)	Total
245	Blacksmith Lapwing	1			1
311	Speckled Pigeon	1			1
383	White-rumped Swift	1			1
391	White-backed Mousebird	6			6
474	Spike-heeled Lark		1		1
485	Grey-backed Sparrow-lark		8		8
488	Red-capped Lark		4		4
495	White-throated Swallow	3			3
502	Greater Striped Swallow	1			1
506	Rock Martin	3			3
544	African Red-eyed Bulbul	1			1
568	Capped Wheatear	1			1
570	Familiar Chat	1			1
576	African Stonechat	2			2
581	Cape Robin-chat	2			2
604	Lesser Swamp Warbler	3			3
606	African Reed Warbler	3			3
621	Long-billed Crombec	2			2
637	Neddicky	1			1
686	Cape Wagtail	6			6
707	Southern Fiscal	7		1	8
722	Bokmakierie	1			1
735	Wattled Starling	2			2
746	Pied Starling	27	3	3	33
784	House Sparrow	3			3
786	Cape Sparrow	74			74
803	Southern Masked Weaver	58	1	1	60
805	Red-billed Quelea	38			38
808	Southern Red Bishop	16	14		30
865	White-throated Canary	4			4
1104	Karoo Thrush	3			3
1172	Cape White-eye	2			2
1183	Eastern Clapper Lark		3		3
4139	Karoo Prinia	1			1
4142	Southern Grey-headed Sparrow	3			3
	TOTALS	277	34	5	316

We had some bitterly cold mornings at the Waterpump and the nearby waterhole!

Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

Frozen waterhole at Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

Ice at Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

… but once it warms up a bit and the waterhole defrosts, many birds come to drink here, and it is good spot for larks …

Four larks at Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

… at one point, we had four species in the hand at the same time: Grey-backed Sparrow-lark, Eastern Clapper Lark, Red-capped Lark and Spike-heeled Lark.

Speckled Pigeon head at Ninth bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

The big privilege of being a ringer is to see birds close up. The patterned eye and wrinkled red skin of this Speckled Pigeon add a new level to our appreciation of birds. Likewise for the wing below:

Speckled Pigeon wing at ninth BDI bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024

One night we put nets up on the mudflats along the large dam at New Holme. The reward for a huge amount of effort was one Blacksmith Lapwing …

… but that is the way ringing works, sometimes. But it was the only Blacksmith Lapwing of the course.

Cape Bird Club sponsorship

Joel Simons, of the Ingcungcu Sunbird Restoration Project on the Cape Flats of Cape Town, was sponsored by the Cape Bird Club to attend the ringing course. Joel wrote about his experiences in an article in the March 2025 edition of Promerops, the Cape Bird Club’s newsletter. This comprehensive account is reproduced here in full, and supplements the brief report above!

… and here is a paragraph about Joel, from the Ingcungcu Sunbird Restoration Project website:

Joel Simons at Ninth BDI bird ringing course at New Holme September 2024 — *Joel Simons, Ingcungcu Sunbird Restoration Project, runs the school Eco Club programme* *and was sponsored to attend the ringing course by the Cape Bird Club*

Archive/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Vanrhynsdorp

Bird ringing course at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp : 15 to 20 November 2024

Posted on 30/06/2025 by Les Underhill

The BDI’s 10th bird ringing course was held at Botuin, Vanrhynsdorp, from 15 to 20 November 2024. We have a selection of ringing sites in the district, which we use in rotation during our trips. We are trying to reach a point where a good proportion of the birds at these sites are ringed, and over a period of years we will be able to collect enough data that we can make, for example, estimates of survival rates for the bird species here. The importance of the data which we are collected is summarized in this blog The Value of Bird Ringing to Research and Conservation.

One of our favourite sites in the Botuin district is “the lark site” at the foot of the Maskamberg, commonly known as the Gifberg. This block of rock has an instantly recognizable profile. When you see it, it screams “VANRYHNSDORP” (which, when rewritten for English speakers, is pronounced FUN-RAINS-DORP).

So this blog opens with a series of images of “the lark site” which hopefully captures the spirit of the place.

Lark site: Bird ringing course at Botuin

Mist nets : Bird ringing course at Botuin

By November, the area is taking on summer browns. In contrast, here is a winter green, with a long line of mistnets.

Mist nets at lark site : Bird ringing course at Botuin

We never catch many birds here, but we do get information on birds we never occur at the “easy sites”. On this morning during the course the total catch was 11 birds, of seven species: Large-billed Lark, Karoo Chat, Karoo Scrub Robin, Grey-backed Cisticola, Red-billed Quelea, Southern Red Bishop and Karoo Prinia. Of these species, the ones we only obtain at this site are Large-billed Lark and the Karoo Chat.

Another ringing site in the area, new to us in the sense that we have not fully explored the opportunities here is on Maskam Farm, which in early spring has magnificent displays of flowers, and is open to the public. From the bird ringing perspective, there’s a variety of habitats, including a small farm dam, gardens, and areas like this, where the vegetation is of uneven height, but the tops of the tallest shrubs are at mistnet height:

Maskam habitat : Bird ringing course at Botuin

Sewage works are an irresistible magnet for birders in general and ringers in particular! In arid areas, the sewage works is frequently one of the only places with open water.The sewage works just outside Vanrhynsdorp is no exception.That is a Maccoa Duck on the pan in the photograph below. Besides ducks, coot, moorhens, crakes, etc, the reedbeds at the sewage works provide roosts for bishops and weavers, and those are our main target species here.

*The photo of the splash on the right was taken one second after the Maccao Duck on the left. What did the tail do?*

Doing a ringing course in November is is especially good it you want to learn about moult. More and more, we are making photographic records, and below is a selection from an awesome collection made by Toni Hoenders, attending the course from the Netherlands, where she is a trainee ringer.

The Hoopoe above has completed primary moult. The 10 primaries (the all black feathers) have tips which are clearly demarcated and unfrayed.

Laughing Dove : Bird ringing course at Botuin

Laughing Doves have 10 primaries. On this dove, the division between the primaries and the secondaries is obvious. The lighter grey secondaries all have central shafts that curve a bit to the right. Primaries one to three have been replaced, and they are the three dark grey feathers, and because they are grown in sequence, the third one is the newest. Then there are six old primaries which have had a year of use. Three + Six = Nine. So there is a primary missing. It HAS to be primary four, just outside primary three, so the six old primaries are numbers five to ten!

Look again at the three longest primaries of the dove, numbers five, six and seven. When the dove is settled, with its wings folded, the tips of these feather are exposed. You can see the impact of the sun. The last few millimetres of these three feathers are faded. When the dove is settled, the outer primaries are folded away under the other primaries, so they don’t show this pattern.

The outer five primary feathers of this Lark-like Bunting are faded compared with the inner primaries. So they are old, even though they are not particularly ragged at the ends. Lark-like Buntings have nine primaries. The outer five are old, so we are looking for four more. The brown feathers on the right are secondaries, with slightly curved shafts.Two new primaries are clearly visible. Neither is full length yet, so they are still growing. A little bit of primary three is visible under primary two. It is a bit less than half grown. So the missing fourth primary has to come next, and it HAS to be in the gap just before the old primaries, which must numbers five to nine.

Getting to the end of this primary moult tutorial. Southern Red Bishop has nine primaries. The seven outer primaries are visible, and old. Therefore we are looking for two more. The big feathers on the right are all secondaries; shafts curve right. Therefore primaries one and two must be in the gap. Because the feathers grow in sequence, that half grown feather must be primary one, with primary two, still invisible, alongside it.

In this photograph, you can see how the feathers grow. That blackish sheath, at the base of the growing primary, is the scene of the action. That is where the growth takes place, and the part of the feather grown so far is what moves slowly outwards. So the tip of the growing feather will ultimately become the tip of the feather, and will line up with the rest of the wing. Moult is an energetically expensive process; the little feather factories are a complex chemical plants, demanding both a supply of raw materials and the energy to turn them into feathers. Every feather has its own chemical plant at its base, which needs to swing into production once a year to replace feathers.

Birds don’t always moult their primaries in the conventional order, from the inside, moulting the outermost primary last. This Southern Masked Weaver above is a puzzle. The superficial classification says “no moult”. But look a bit more carefully. Weavers have nine primaries. The outer three, primaries seven to nine, are new. They are a dark colour (the others look faded), and the edges are neat. Primaries five and six look the oldest of all; the tips are worn, and frayed. Primaries one to four look in better condition, but are also faded. The secondaries are the next six feathers; they bend a bit to the right. The outer five secondaries look newish, unfaded. The sixth secondary (the innermost, above the tip of the finger), looks a bit faded and is therefore probably older than the other five. We can only guess what stresses this bird has endured.

tail moult : Bird ringing course at Botuin

Birds use their tails mainly for steering, balancing and breaking. Tails often have 12 feathers, and they are also replaced annually. The order of tail feather moult is often quite variable, but mostly starts with the central two tail feathers. In this Southern Marked Weaver, only eight of the tail feathers are visible, and they are obviously of very different ages.

The table shows the species handled during the course, and the numbers ringed or retrapped of each species. The total as 261 birds of 29 species, and an amazing 96 were Larklike Buntings.The species in red in the table and underlined have structured species texts in the BDI website. Click on the species and you get taken to its text.

Species	Number
Speckled Pigeon	1
Laughing Dove	13
White-backed Mousebird	5
Red-faced Mousebird	4
Hoopoe	2
Large-billed Lark	1
White-throated Swallow	1
Brown-throated Martin	3
Southern Grey Tit	1
Karoo Chat	1
Karoo Scrub Robin	3
Lesser Swamp Warbler	1
Grey-backed Cisticola	1
Chestnut-vented Warbler	1
Fiscal Flycatcher	4
Southern Fiscal	1
Common Starling	1
Pied Starling	1
Malachite Sunbird	1
House Sparrow	12
Cape Sparrow	51
Cape Weaver	4
Southern Masked Weaver	6
Red-billed Quelea	10
Southern Red Bishop	33
Pin-tailed Whydah	1
White-throated Canary	1
Lark-like Bunting	96
Karoo Prinia	1
Total (29 species)	261

The Cape Bird Club sponsored the attendance of two students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) at the course. Muneeba Lamera and Amy Lewis wrote an appreciation to the club for the opportunity, which was published in Promerops, the newsletter of the Cape Bird Club. Here it is, extracted from Promerops 331, March 2025:

Maskam : Bird ringing course at Botuin — *Examining a Southern Red Bishop during ringing at Maskam Farm, Vanrhynsdorp*

People : Bird ringing course at Botuin — *Team Botuin, November 2024*

Archive/Biodiversity/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science/Trip report

Bird ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA : 7 to 11 April 2025

Posted on 06/06/2025 by Les Underhill

Expedition number five to the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA. Our accommodation was in the delightful units at Hazevlakte.

We arrived Monday 7 April, put up nets in the Hazevlakte werf and handled 53 birds before nightfall. We spent the morning of Tuesday 8 April at the floodplain of the Nuwejaars River, on the farm Moddervlei and caught 39 birds of 16 species. On Wednesday morning we ringed around the dam on the farm Kossierskraal. Between some bouts of light drizzle, we handled a total of 20 birds of 10 species. On Wednesday afternoon we caught 58 birds of 11 species in and around the protea patch on the farm Zandvlakte. We furled the nets tightly closed for the night, and went back there early on Thursday morning to handle 104 birds of 18 species. In the afternoon we went to the farm Vlooikraal, and caught 11 birds of six species! The nets were furled overnight, and a few hours at Vlooikraal on Friday 11 April, departure day, yielded 23 birds of 13 species.

This table shows the numbers handled of each species, with retraps included in this total. These were all from our previous expeditions and were retrapped at the same places where they were ringed. Species underlined and in red have structured species texts on the BDI website; click on the species, and you are linked to the species text.

Species	Number
**Jackal Buzzard	1
**African Marsh Harrier	1
**African Rail	2
**Black Crake	2
**Three-banded Plover	1
Crowned Lapwing	1
Blacksmith Lapwing	5
**African Snipe	5
Red-eyed Dove	3
Ring-necked Dove	4
**Fierynecked Nightjar	2
**Speckled Mousebird	10
**Giant Kingfisher	2
Malachite Kingfisher	1
**Brown-hooded Kingfisher	1
Fork-tailed Drongo	4
**Cape Bulbul	23
Sombre Greenbul	3
Cape Robin-chat	9
Lesser Swamp Warbler	7
Little Rush Warbler	5
Cape Grassbird	1
Bar-throated Apalis	6
Levaillant’s Cisticola	4
Fiscal Flycatcher	8
**Cape Batis	5
Cape Wagtail	5
Southern Fiscal	4
Southern Boubou	4
**Bokmakierie	1
Common Starling	2
Cape Sugarbird	2
Malachite Sunbird	14
Southern Double-collared Sunbird	8
**Amethyst Sunbird	4
House Sparrow	1
Cape Sparrow	8
Cape Weaver	48
Southern Masked Weaver	5
**Common Waxbill	7
Cape Canary	4
**Streaky-headed Canary	1
Cape Bunting	2
Olive Thrush	2
Cape White-eye	63
Karoo Prinia	2
Southern Grey-headed Sparrow	7
Total (47 species)	310

The rest of this blog consists mostly of photos of a selection of these 47 species! The photos are in the same order as in the table. The species in the table with a double asterisk in front of them are the ones with photos!

Jackal Buzzard - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

Dieter Oschadleus is holding this Jackal Buzzard which was caught using a Balchatri trap along the gravel road southwest of the farm Vlooikraal. If you travel along that road, please inspect the Jackal Buzzards to confirm that this one is alive and well!

African March Harrier - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

This African Marsh Harrier was caught in a large-mesh mistnet in the floodplain at Moddervlei. This is a species that demands high-quality habitat and lots of it, which the recently restored wetlands provide.

African Rail - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — ^{Photo: Roger Walsh}

The African Rail is another species that is only present in high-quality habitats. It is not a species which is easy to observe or detect in a wetland. The fact that we caught, not one, but two, birds of this species is greatly encouraging to everyone who was involved in the wetlands restoration project.

Black Crake - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Dieter Oschadleus}*

This is a juvenile Black Crake. The bill is just starting to think about turning yellow!

It is the privilege of being a ringer to see what the eye and eye-ring of a Three-banded Plover really look like. Careful inspection of the photo on the right reveals that this is a young bird. The photo was taken in April 2025, and this bird would have hatched in the spring 2024 breeding season. So at a guess it is somewhere between about five and eight months old. Much of the juvenile plumage has been replaced, but many of the coverts on the back have narrow white fringes; that is a give-away for a young wader! Looking at the main flight feathers in the wing, the primaries, the outermost few feathers are a darker shade of brown to the six inner primaries. It seems that this bird has moulted the outer three primaries, and replaced them. The inner primaries belong to its original set, grown in a rush in the first weeks of life, and therefore likely to be of low quality. It is the outer primaries that do the heavy lifting. So replacing them early in life is a great survival strategy.

African Snipe - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

If you look up and down at the birds featured in this blog, most of them have bills which are shorter even much shorter, than their heads. The bill of this African Snipe is about two-and-a-half times as long as its head.

Fiery-necked Nightjar - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Dieter Oschadleus}*

The detail of the patterns of the Fiery-necked Nightjar in the two photos above is impressive. In most species of birds the relative sizes of the primaries form a fairly sensible curve, often a parabola. Not the nightjars! The endpoints of the inner six primaries form a more or less straight line. Primary seven is much longer than number six, a serious discontinuity! Primaries eight and nine are slightly longer than primary seven. and primary ten is a bit shorter.

Giant Kingfisher - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

The Giant Kingfisher is a large bird. This is a male with the top of the front brown and the bottom white; in the female the colours are the other way round.

Close up, like this you can see the pattern of markings that give the Speckled Mousebird its name. It is not a useful identification feature.

The mousebird on the right is moulting its primaries. Mousebirds have 10 primaries, but only eight are easily visible against the white background. The inner four are slightly darker than the outer primaries, so are newly grown. Primary five is actively growing. The scene of growth action is at the base of the primary, where it emerges through the skin. The feather production organ here has been activated, and has a rich supply of blood. Ringers know to be careful when handling birds in moult, and to avoid making contact with these feather factories. Once the feather is fully grown, and the outer tip of the feather has lined up with the other primaries, blood supply ceases, and the feather growth organ atrophies until it is needed again, in a year’s time. The three visible outer primaries are old, and look a bit thin and fragile compared to the new ones. The 10th primary is about half size; and in the photograph it is lying on top of the ninth. That makes nine primaries so far. The missing primary has to be primary six, just outside the primary which is growing! So, in summary, primaries one to four are new, primary five is actively growing, the old primary six has been discarded, and the new feather is not yet visible, and the four outer primaries, seven to ten, are a year old, and are waiting their turn for replacement. If all the primaries were replaced at the same time, the bird would not be able to fly.

Brown-hooded Kingfisher.

Cape Bulbul - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

The white cere surrounding the eye of the Cape Bulbul is elliptical, not circular, and the eye is towards the back end of the oval. For the African Red-eyed Bulbul, the cere is red and circular, and the eye is in the middle of the circle. According to the field guides, the Cape Bulbul is the only species that ought to occur in the Overberg, and on the Agulhas Plain, all bulbuls really should be Cape. But there are two nearby records of African Red-eyed Bulbul: one at Stanford and one at Struisbaai, Cape Agulhas (have a look at this paper in Biodiversity Observations; and be aware that the African Red-eyed Bulbul is expanding its range southward! Read this paper, entitled Range expansion of African Red-eyed Bulbul Pycnonotus nigricans in western South Africa, OpenAccess in Ostrich). On this particular expedition, we ringed 23 Cape Bulbuls, and zero African Red-eyed Bulbuls, but we are always alert to the possibility!

Cape Batis male and female - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Jade Wilding}*

It is rare to have the opportunity to take a photograph of a female (left) and male Cape Batis side-by-side. Here they are again!

Bokmakierie - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Jade Wilding}*

The bill of the Bokmakierie is a formidable weapon. It will turn a caterpillar instantly to mincemeat, and even a beetle with a tough exoskeleton doesn’t stand a chance.

Common Waxbill - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

From the close-up view of the bird ringer, the Common Waxbill has the same zebra pattern all over. Simple, delicate stripes.

Amethyst Sunbird - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Dieter Oschadleus}*

The Amethyst Sunbird is steadily extending its range westward. But it is still a relatively unusual species on the Agulhas Plain. From this angle, it is easy to grasp why its English common name was Black Sunbird.

Streky-headed Seedeater - Bird ringing at Nuwejaars April 2025 — *^{Photo: Roger Walsh}*

The Streaky-headed Canary has the typical bill of a seedeater: short, stubby and roughly cone-shaped. The beak is powerful, and is used for dehusking seeds.

The team of ringers for this trip consisted of Dieter Oschadleus, Jade Wilding, Oliver Fox, Roger Walsh and myself. Jade, Oliver and Roger were visiting ringers from the UK. They are intensely involved in the Kartong Bird Observatory in The Gambia and transferred to us lots of skills gained in The Gambia and the UK.

Thanks

We are grateful to Con and Karen Neethling for enabling us to use the units at Hazevlakte as our base. Con Neethling, Liohan Giliomee and Mick D’Alton gave us permission to ring on their farms. Eugene Hahndiek, Erica Brink and Ross Kettles in the offices of the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA helped in lots of ways.

… and …

… you can read about future ringing events here. There is a list of reports like this here. The value and importance of bird ringing to research and conservation is described here.

Archive/Bird ringing/Birding/Birds/Citizen Science/Trip report

Bird ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA : 30 May to 4 June 2025

Posted on 05/06/2025 by Les Underhill

We had another exploratory ringing expedition to the Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area (SMA) from Friday 30 May to Wednesday 4 June. This is the BDI’s sixth ringing visit to this area. The previous ones were in October and in November 2024, and in February, March and April this year. This is our first ringing trip here in early winter, and we wanted to get a feel for what birds we could anticipate ringing at this time of year.

We stayed at our usual accommodation at Hazevlakte. This is what you see when you arrive:

Hazevlakte rearview — *_{Photo: Les Underhill}*

… go through the unit, and this is the view that greets you:

Hazevlakte --- view from front door — *^{Photo: Les Underhill}*

… the units look out over the Nuwejaars River. The lawn is kept short by a flock of multicoloured sheep!

Hazevlakte. Lawnmowing sheep — *^{Photo: Les Underhill}*

The view upstream (i.e. westward) from the stoep looks towards the floodplains which the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA has cleared of aliens, and is now an irresistible magnet for waterbirds (and bird ringers).

Hazevlakte - view upstream along Nuwejaars River — *^{Photo: Les Underhill}*

Looking downstream, the building in the distance across the river, between the two windpumps, is the headquarters of the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA:

Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA offices — *^{Photo: Les Underhill}*

These are the offices of the team that coordinates all the conservation activities across all the farms that have joined the Special Management Area. The most important of these activities is the clearance of alien vegetation. There are excellent insights in this eight-minute video.

That is enough of the context. Now, on to the birds …

On arrival late on Friday afternoon, around sunset, we put up a few mist nets on the werf at Hazevlakte, so we would be ready at dawn on …

… Saturday

On Saturday morning we ringed in and around the Hazevlakte werf. In spite of a stiff breeze and a nip in the air, we caught 25 birds. The very first bird was a retrap. We had ringed this Fiscal Flycatcher here on our third visit on 24 February this year:

Fiscal Flycatcher retrap - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^Photo:* *^{Dieter Oschadleus}*

On Saturday afternoon, we put mistnets up in the floodplain of the Nuwejaars River at Moddervlei …

Sunday

… and we were back before dawn on Sunday morning:

… and put more nets up …

Putting up nets at Moddervlei — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

… and some more …

putting up mistnets at Moddervlei — *^{Photo: Taryn Daley}*

… so that there were lots of mistnets! But conditions were less than perfect for mistnetting. In spite of this we ringed some impressive birds. For example, first bird was an African Snipe:

African Snipe - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

… and here is a view of the patterned wing and tail, something that only ringers get to see properly …

African Snipe back and wings -Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 20 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

During the course of this morning, we caught the-species-of-the-expedition:

Burchell's Coucal - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Les Underhill}*

Burchell’s Coucals don’t easily get caught in mistnets! Here is a different angle on the same bird:

The next really special bird was Black Crake:

Black Crake - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

The eyes and legs are red, and the bill is a shade of yellow reminisicient of plastic toys!

Monday

Monday morning was spent at a patch of planted proteas adjacent to some good-quality fynbos.

Mist nets in protea patch - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

There were proteas in bloom:

… and, yes, there were Cape Sugarbirds breeding:

wing of male Cape Sugarbird - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

This is the wing of a male Cape Sugarbird. Primary 6 has a big notch in it. There are 10 primaries, and the outermost, Primary 10, is small. So Primary 6 is four feathers in from the outside. Primary 7 also has a notch but it is much smaller. Female Cape Sugarbirds also have these notches on their primaries, but they are quite small. It is these features of birds that only ringers really get to see.

Cape Sugarbirds breed during winter. The broodpatch of this female is evidence that she is breeding:

^{Video: Sue Gie}

The brood patch is an area of bare skin which birds only have when they are incubating eggs. The skin is in contact with the eggs, transferring warmth to them. Feathers provide excellent insulation, so if birds had to incubate their eggs through their feathers, the job would never get finished.

There were lots of other species in the protea patch, including this Cape Weaver:

Cape Weaver male with marie biscuit-coloured eye - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — ^{Photo: Sue Gie}

This bird is a male. Only male Cape Weavers have this marie-biscuit eye colour. Adult females have brown eyes, and the brown colour contrasts with the black pupil. Very young Cape Weavers have darkish brown eyes, which hardly show any contrast with the pupil. Ageing of birds-in-the-hand is one of the skills you learn when you become a bird ringer.

A species which is now common in the eastern half of the Western Cape, and expanding into the suburbs of Cape Town, is the Fork-tailed Drongo:

Fork-tailed Drongo - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

There are almost invariably trees in the places where it occurs, and often these are alien eucalyptus trees, such as flowering gums.

The pain threshold of a trainee ringer is being tested here by a Southern Fiscal!

Southern Fiscal - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025

… if the beak of a fiscal gets a good grip on you, it can draw blood. You don’t want to be an insect within its circle of vision!

Tuesday

One of the objectives of this expedition was to explore new ringing sites, so on Tuesday morning our focus moved to a new access point to the floodplain of the Nuwejaars River about halfway between Hazevlakte and Moddervlei. The big discovery was that there are multiple potential ringing sites along a section of the floodplain at least a kilometre in length. So we will never have to go back to the same site more than once on any ringing expedition. Bird-of-the-day for Tuesday was …

African Rail - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

… sorry, not was, but were, two African Rails!

We also trapped this Blacksmith Lapwing, which had a spur two-thirds as long as a finger-nail:

spur of male Blacksmith Lapwing - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — ^{Photo: Les Underhill}

With a spur this vicious, this lapwing is almost certainly a male. We also had a …

Malachite Kingfisher - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Michelle Vrettos}*

… couple of Malachite Kingfishers. Spectacular birds in the hand. It is hard to believe that the infestation of alien invasive wattles was cleared out of this part of the floodplain only six years ago:

Nuwejaars River floodplain - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Sue Gie}*

Wednesday

We had a couple of hours of ringing back at the werf at Hazevlakte, around our accommodation before we packed up and left. Birds-of-the-day were a pair of …

Cardinal Woodpeckers - Male and female - Ringing at Nuwejaars Wetlands June 2025 — *^{Photo: Dieter Oschadleus}*

… Cardinal Woodpeckers. Male on the left, female on the right!

Wrap-up

Bird ringers need fuel. So we had some excellent braais:

We turned a generous supply of freshly harvested apples into …

… baked apple.

This table summarizes the ringing effort. The numbers for each species include both newly ringed birds and retraps of birds ringed on the previous five expeditions to the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA. The number of retraps among the 112 birds was 15. Species underlined and in red have structured species texts on the BDI website; click on the species, and you are linked to the species text.

Species	Number
African Rail	2
Black Crake	2
Blacksmith Lapwing	7
African Snipe	1
Speckled Mousebird	1
Malachite Kingfisher	2
Cardinal Woodpecker	2
Fork-tailed Drongo	1
Cape Bulbul	10
Sombre Greenbul	1
Capped Wheatear	1
Lesser Swamp Warbler	5
Little Rush Warbler	1
Long-billed Crombec	1
Bar-throated Apalis	2
Grey-backed Cisticola	1
Levaillant’s Cisticola	3
Fiscal Flycatcher	3
Cape Batis	2
Cape Wagtail	3
Southern Fiscal	5
Cape Sugarbird	2
Southern Double-collared Sunbird	2
Cape Sparrow	1
Cape Weaver	26
Southern Masked Weaver	16
Southern Red Bishop	6
Yellow Bishop	1
Cape Bunting	1
Burchell’s Coucal	1
Total (30 species)	112

The value of bird ringing to research and conservation is discussed here. The data collected is first submitted to SAFRING, which administers bird ringing in South Africa. Once we have done a bunch more expeditions like this one, we will be able to provide information relevant to the conservation of the birds of the Nuwejaars Wetlands SMA. One obvious success story is the evidence that species such as African Rail, Black Crake and African Snipe, three species that are pretty fussy about habitat quality, are present in the floodplain in good numbers.

The croplands of the Agulhas Plain in particular, and the Overberg in general, have become home for large numbers of South Africa’s national bird, the Blue Crane. A big flock flew over our accommodation at Hazevlakte early one morning:

^{Video: Gareth Nortje}

Thank you …

Thanks to Karen Neethling for the use of the units at Hazevlakte. Thanks to Con Neethling and Liohan Gilomee for access to their farms for ringing. Thanks to Ross Kettles and Erica Brink at Nuwejaars Wetlands for their help with the planning, and arranging access to the farms. Greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all the photographers.

Video!!

And if you’ve not yet watched the video about the work of the Nuwejaars Wetlands team, here it is again! It is actually only seven minutes and 28 seconds long!