In decreasing scale, you have world listers, regional listers, country listers, provincial listers, local listers and garden listers. The tickophiles keep most or all of the above lists, while a select few eclectic enthusiasts even keep lists of birds seen or heard in movies.
Listing is a healthy outlet for the hairless ape's urge to hunt and collect (or gather) that has been instilled in us (particularly males) throughout human evolution. For many of us, this becomes a primary need alongside eating and sleeping, and sometimes even replaces or inhibits the last of the three primitive functions (just ask all the birding divorcees). Listing can provide a target for birding – and never-ending motivation for travel, learning and frivolous expenditure.
Keeping lists is a deeply personal exercise, but it needn’t end there. One of the most important ways you can give back to the conservation of birds is to submit your lists to one or more citizen science projects.
Citizen science is the collection of scientific data by non-traditional scientists within a set of well-defined, rigorous protocols. The data are then aggregated into a meaningful dataset. By involving laymen, projects are able to collect data from wider areas, over longer timescales and from more sources than would be possible if the small project team undertook the task itself. If the initial protocols are well set up with directions that are clear and reliably followed by the observers, then citizen science can produce uniquely vast and useful datasets that can stand up to scrutiny and statistical analysis.
Denne historien er fra January/February 2023-utgaven av African Birdlife.
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Denne historien er fra January/February 2023-utgaven av African Birdlife.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
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.
