This is a tale of an atlasing adventure to the Narok County district of Kenya, adjacent to the world- famous Maasai Mara National Reserve. I’d been invited to direct a Biosphere Expeditions group to conduct wildlife surveys in Enonkishu, the northern-most of the Mara conservancies. People come from all over the world – Finland, France, Australia and Germany, for example – to help with these expeditions. We would observe not only buffalo, cheetah, lion and leopard, but also the Maasai roaming with their large herds of cattle. The western boundary of the conservancy is the Mara River, beyond which lies a patchwork of small agricultural plots, intensively farmed and heavily populated.
The survey meant a chance to extend my BirdLasser life-list and to contribute to the Kenya BirdMap project. Since the project’s integration with the SABAP platform, birdwatchers in Kenya have been making great strides in creating good coverage of the country. However, there are still very large gaps, including the south-western section of the country in the direction of Lake Victoria.
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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.
