Climate in Africa influences timing of migration of Willow Warblers in Poland
Since the 1980s, many migrant birds have arrived increasingly earlier in Europe in the northern hemisphere spring (March-April-May). This has often been attribu...
Author: Les Underhill
Prof Les Underhill was Director of the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town from its start in 1991 until he retired. Although citizen science in biology is Les’s passion, his academic background is in mathematical statistics. He was awarded his PhD in abstract multivariate analyses in 1973 at UCT and what he likes to say about his PhD is that he solved a problem that no one has ever had. He soon grasped that this was not the field to which he wanted to devote his life, so he retrained himself as an applied statistician, solving real-world problems.
Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus)
The Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus breeds in Europe and Asia. Most move south for the northern winter. Most remain in soutern Europe, some migrate...
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)
The Little Egret Egretta garzetta belongs to a large family of birds called the Ardeidae, the herons, the egrets and the bitterns. The herons are, on average, l...
Birds on the coastline of the Western Cape
The focus here is on learning the really common birds which you can expect to see on the coastline in the Western Cape. These are the species you are most likel...
African Oystercatcher (Haematopus moquini)
The African Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini is one of the iconic bird species of the coastline of the southwestern Africa. There is only one oystercatcher that...
Impacts of Rhodes on Biodiversity 3 : Common Starling
This is the third and final blog in this series on the impacts of Rhodes on biodiversity. The first blog talked about the Eastern Grey Squirrel. The second cove...
BirdPix on a run in 2021
BirdPix is important because it is going to be used to test whether “species distribution models” can be used to generate maps that look like the bi...
How do you refresh a butterfly? You LepiMAP it in 2021!
The take home message of this blog is one of disappointment! But the reality is that we have never looked at the butterflies in LepiMAP in this way before. Beca...
Starting from scratch : OdonataMAP in 2021
We lost all the data***. Now we need to be starting from scratch! This is not such a crazy idea. It is so easy to think. I know that the Red-veined Dropwing has...
Progress with BirdPix in the Free State during 2020
We will slowly work out way through projects and provinces! We have done BirdPix in the Western Cape. This map shows the number of bird species recorded for Bir...