BDInsight – March 2024

Cover image: Three-banded Plover (Charadrius tricollaris) – Vanrhynsdorp, Western Cape – Photo by Amandine Dore

Welcome to the March 2024 edition of the BDInsight. We have plenty of news to share and plenty of exciting events coming up. Read on to find out more…..

Bird Ringing

The 2024 ringing season kicked off with our first course for the year held at Botuin in Vanrhynsdorp in the Western Cape Province. This was the 7th BDI bird ringing course. You can get links to the previous courses and other bird ringing events here.

Although we had some extremely hot (over 40°C) and windy days, the last 3 days of the course started with nice and overcast conditions. Our week long ringing course was based at Botuin, from 31 January until 6 February 2024. We caught 285 birds, including retraps, of 37 species. As on previous trips, we visited the Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works and Gifberg veld in addition to ringing in the Botuin gardens.

Early mornings at Gifberg. Setting up the nets for the morning ringing session.

The species diversity was highest in the Botuin gardens, with some exciting species being Namaqua Warbler, Chestnut-vented Warbler and a Fairy Flycatcher (Table 1). Most birds were caught at the Vanrhynsdorp Sewage Works, with a total catch of 65 Southern Red Bishops on two visits. Exciting species here included four Three-banded Plovers and a Little Stint. The karoo veld on the slopes of Gifberg had lower numbers and species but this site produced five Rufous-eared Warblers (a pair caught in a spring trap simultaneously!), three Large-billed Larks and a Karoo Chat.

Overall the most caught species were the Southern Red Bishop (67 birds) and Cape Sparrow (59). Lots of retraps from previous ringing events at Vanrhynsdorp were processed, including several that had moved between the sewage works and Botuin, a straight line distance of 1.5 km (see more here).

The team setting up a nice shady spot to process the birds caught in the nets.

There are two more ringing courses planned for 2024. They are:

1 to 7 May at Ouberg Private Nature Reserve, Montagu, Western Cape
09 to 15 September at New Holme Lodge, near Hanover, Northern Cape.
More details are here. There is a broad description of the course activities here.

Virtual Museum

Up-to-date distribution maps for species are critical for taking conservation decisions about species. Spring is springing, and the butterflies and moths, dragonflies and damselflies, will soon be out and about. Now is the time to dust off your cameras and get out into the field and start refreshing records in the Virtual Museum.

Records made long ago in a grid cell are slowly losing their value as evidence that the species is still present there, and need to be refreshed.

If your access to the Virtual Museum is not working (eg password issues) please contact Megan Loftie-Eaton for help (megan@thebdi.org).

BDI-style Bird Species Texts

We are aiming to make it easier for beginner birders! Key to this is the production of “BDI-style” species texts on the BDI website. The BDI-style texts do not only focus on identification but provides all sorts of interesting information.