Our first field season during the summer of that year involved a team of three researchers based at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve: Fitztitute postdoctoral fellows Susie Cunningham and Rowan Martin and UP doctoral student Ben Smit. In the 10 years since, the Hot Birds Research Programme (HBRP) has grown into a team of about 20 people based at the Fitztitute, UP, National Zoological Garden and Rhodes University, with a network of collaborators spanning several overseas universities.
During the HBRP’s first decade, we have learnt much about how higher temperatures affect desert birds. Small birds face a significant risk of lethal dehydration on very hot days; evaporating water to lose heat, often by panting, is the only way birds can avoid lethal heat stress. In extremely hot weather, small birds can die of dehydration in a matter of hours.
In the intensely hot deserts of the American south-west and the interior of Australia, climate change is producing conditions under which catastrophic mortality events involving thousands – occasionally millions – of birds will occur far more often than in the past. Some range-restricted Australian species could be driven to extinction within a matter of days in extreme heatwaves. If this sounds alarmist, consider that Australia lost one third of its entire population of a flying-fox species in just two days of extreme heat late last year.
Bu hikaye African Birdlife dergisinin November 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye African Birdlife dergisinin November 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
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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.