The Birding Blog — The Birding Blog

It is amazing how often the first bird heard in the morning is the Cape robin-chat. It is not just the quality of the singing, but the joyfulness. There really is no better way to start the day. With spring coming we will see an increase of activity, and hopefully a boost in numbers. Bearing in mind that this creature is monogamous, you normally have a pair, and furthermore, they live a long life (Geoff Lockwood reports one of nearly 17 years old as at February 2017!) They actually do become part of the “family”. Everyone loves them, and everyone...

Who needs the team on Gough Island? We have our own weatherman in the form of this little weaver. We have been watching him for about 2 weeks now as he has started to change to his breeding colours. Whereas the national averages indicate that the coldest period in South Africa is early July, he seems to be telling a different story! In truth we have had a very mild winter. The days are already getting longer. Roll on spring!

No she does not come from Galilee – she comes from Kruger Park. And no she does not walk on water, she walks on water lilies. Nevertheless, she certainly is one of the great designs of the Almighty. The female jacana actually has a harem of males. I suppose that is only to be expected considering how pretty this one is. On the other hand the males look identical, and are identified by being physically smaller. What a woman!

Many (many) years ago, I took a course in population dynamics. It was really interesting (even to a rather disassociated engineering student). For example, we studied population interaction of hunters with zebras, and with predating lions (in a specific vegetation zone). Of particular interest was the study of weavers interacting with brood parasitic Diederik Cuckoos, and predating boomslang.In all examples and cases such as these, the problem statement starts with stable populations, and entails injection of a perturbation, for example a widespread fire, or three years of severe drought etc., and tracks the effect on the animal populations. In all...

This morning I cut a single orange in half, and placed it on the fruit feeder. Within 30 seconds, several visitors had arrived and a pecking order had been established. It triggered a thought – what makes that orange so attractive (and we can observe that even more excitement is generated in winter). The immediate mental response was “energy”. And so I researched. Let us take the Black-fronted Bulbul as an example. At times the energy requirements are massive (e.g. breeding season). A typical number will be 3000kJ/kg/day. considering the mass at around 1/30 kg, it means that this little...