HEADLINE NEWS
With so many great birds being reported, it is difficult to know where to start, but new species for southern Africa – and indeed Africa – obviously deserve line honours. Many twitchers were in utter disbelief on 30 January when news came through of the subregion’s first ever Crested Honey Buzzard found in Somerset West. Initially seen soaring over Lourensford Estate, the bird was relocated later that same day in the Spanish Farm area. It remained vaguely reliable there, especially in the late afternoons, and many birders managed to see it. There were some initial concerns that it might be a hybrid but, after consulting with a number of the world’s raptor experts, the consensus reached was that it was a pure bird and apparently a juvenile in its second calendar year. (Read more about this bird in the article ‘Mixed messages’, starting on page 26.) There are a handful of previous records of Crested Honey Buzzard in sub-Saharan Africa, but it remains a very rare bird on the continent. It was interesting that another individual, an adult male, was seen in Kenya shortly after the local bird was found.
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.
