Our 1st 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 1st 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
