Most of them know that Madagascar is a big island off the east coast. But those who visit can be baffled by the place, finding that the wildlife they’re familiar with on the mainland is not replicated here. A suite of ferocious predators has been swapped for a family of odd, mongoose-like carnivorans; in place of the herds of herbivores are gentle, arboreal lemurs. Most travelling birders are aware of the island’s several endemic bird families, including species that are drastically different from anything on the African mainland.
Madagascar is profoundly unique and rich, so different from the rest of the world that it’s sometimes called ‘the eighth continent’. Not only does it have the high level of endemism characteristic of islands, but it also boasts remarkable diversity, which for some groups approaches that more typical of a continent. Despite having only 0.4 per cent of the earth’s land area, Madagascar holds about three per cent of the global tally of plant and vertebrate species, and the vast majority of these are endemic. The island is a treasure trove of biodiversity and a ‘laboratory of evolution’, much like Galápagos but on a grander scale. Visiting it is almost like travelling to a parallel universe, in which evolution has been free to run wild on a completely different course. If only Darwin had made it to Madagascar…
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EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
