Correct way when practicing on the Range

Find below an image that is very helpful to Maintenance Staff in preserving tee surface area on the Driving Range:

Thank-you

A list that just keeps growing...

Our 1^st Birdwatch and Ringing of 2015 was once again a huge success!!

If you consider yourself a “Birder” or just looking for an excuse to leave the house at 5h30 on a Saturday morning...this was a special one in its own way.

For those who have not been to one of these - these morning walks are limited to 40 members and guests to attend, with the booking spots filling up well before the actual outing. Everybody meets at Reception where a quick introduction and explanation of the schedule follows. We then start walking down on to the Golf Course and move through areas golfers and maintenance staff haven’t even been there on the day.

As always our 1^st Birdwalk of the year is the one where we get Gerrie and his team of Ringers in to show us more what goes into ringing birds. This is a very delicate exercise as great care goes in to ensuring these birds are not hurt or stressed in any way.

Gerrie and his team entered our premises at 3am to start installing and setting-up the very fine nets they use to trap and catch the birds. These birds then get ringed with a little steel ring with its own unique number on and then the weight, wingspan and location recorded onto the SA Birdlife database. At our next ringing here at PCC or somewhere nearby, one will be trapped and the new measurements/data will help to understand the movements and growth of these species.

On this day a total of 60 birds were ringed consisting of 24 different species and during the walk we spotted 45 different species and were lucky enough to spot 2 species not yet identified on the premises before and add them to our ever-growing PCC Bird List namely:

-          African cuckoo (Cuculus gularis)

-          Half-Collared kingfisher (Alcedo semitorquata)

 Image Left - The African cuckoo occupies huge areas of sub-Saharan Africa, absent from parts of the DRC, Somalia, South Africa and Namibia. It usually occurs in open woodland and Acacia savannas, mostly eating caterpillars.

It is a brood parasite, meaning that it lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, then the host, thinking that the egg is its own incubates the egg and cares for the chick.

Image Right - It exclusively parasitizes Fork-tailed Drongos (which has been spotted several times before at PCC)

The male African Cuckoo distracts them whilst the female flies in to the nest, removes any existing eggs before laying one of its own. Soon after hatching, the chick removes any existing Drongo eggs or chicks in the nest, remaining in the nest for about 23 days before leaving.

Image Above - The Half-collared kingfisher is a species of kingfisher that feeds almost exclusively on fish and can be found near water at all times. This bird is actually classified as “vulnerable” on the National Conservation Status List. We were very lucky to have ringed one here at PCC.

We look forward to seeing you at the next Birdwalk…

References:

Biodiversity Explorer – www.biodiversityexplorer.org

Wikipedia – www.wikipedia.org