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Bokmakierie Newsletter of the Witwatersrand Bird Club December 2014 No 241 ND RA S R E T B A U L W T C I W D IR B BirdLife SOUTH AFRICA Giving Conservation Wings ARBOR DAY - 6th SEPTEMBER 2014 Photos by Lia Steen Joan Strugnell WBC Members Scout Group Barbi Forsyth, Peter Austin & Andy Featherstone Andy Featherstone with Scout Group Joan Strugnell showing the Scouts a thing or two P O Box 641 WITWATERSRAND Cresta 2118 BIRD CLUB Tel: 011 782 7267 Fax: 086 512 7696 ISSUE NO 241 Email: [email protected] DECEMBER 2014 Web: www.witsbirdclub.org.za Inside this issue: 37 Rarities and unusual sightings re- port: August 2014 compiled by An- 4 Letter from the Chair dré Marx 5 Longest Tick by Rolf Wiesler 7 Zululand Highlights by Anthony Cavanagh 2014 Committee: 9 Rufous-cheeked Nightjar by Mar- Honorary President Murrie Slotar celle Van Wyk Chairman Andy Featherstone 10 Prieska Atlas Bash 19 - 24th Sep- Vice-Chairman Barbi Forsyth tember 2014 by Lia Steen Treasurer Leanne Webster Courses Murrie Slotar 14 Hand-reared Penguins have the Conservation Barbi Forsyth same Survival Chance as Wild Evening Meetings Lia Steen Ones Programme Ginny Mes 15 A Review of Bird Ringing at Mel- ville Koppies From 1973 -2014 by Club Secretary Lauraine Leigh James McLuskie 20 Namibia’s New Fishing Regula- DEADLINE FOR APRIL 2015 IS- tions Could Save 30,000 Seabirds SUE - 1st MARCH 2015 a Year 21 Trip to Namibia, September 2014, Contributions, addressed to the Editor, can be: to find Short-toed Rock-Thrushes- by Gail Schaum E-mailed to: [email protected] 23 “R-OC(K)TOBER 2014” by Barbi Forsyth Posted to: The Editor, Witwatersrand Bird Club, P O Box 641, Cresta, 2118 26 Hoogland 13 September 2014 by Jan van Heerden Delivered to: Delta Environmental 28 The Great Shoebill Hunt – Ugan- Centre, Road No 3, Victory Park da, with Africa Geographic by Lesley Cornish Faxed to: 086 512 7696 36 Magui Rayner by Howard & Car- men Cover Photo: White-throated Robin-Chat by Cover Design: Philip Tarboton Trevor Charters 3 tential new venue for our evening meet- Letter ings. Please look at future events in the Weekly Reminder in the new year as we From intend to try at least one of these venues to see how it will work. If you have any The strong views on our venue or suggestions for improvement then please let Lauraine Chair or myself know. Dear Members, One of our recent successes has been the Calendar Competition, the standard of As we were unable to post the August edi- photography has been amazing and if tion due to the postal strike you will be re- you have not seen the calendar yet please ceiving the August and December editions make sure you do as it has a terrific col- at the same time, our apologies for this but lection of photographs. Thank you to all it was just too expensive to arrange for an of you who took part and to Robbie As- alternative delivery system. peling and Albert Froneman for judging Over the last four months have had cel- the photographs. Congratulations to all ebrations in the form of East Rand’s 25th photographers whose images appear in Anniversary and Joan Strugnell’s 90th the Calendar. birthday we have also sadly lost members As this is the last Bokmakierie of 2014 let too. On behalf of the club, condolences to me conclude by wishing everyone a happy Howard Rayner on the loss of Magui. and restful holiday over the festive season. Murrie Slotar our Honorary President will If you are travelling drive carefully and be moving to Durban in the new year to arrive safely. For those that have time be with her family and Barbi Forsyth has to birdwatch I wish you lots of interesting decided to stand down from the Com- sightings and perhaps a few new birds for mittee after many years of loyal service. your list. May 2015 be a wonderful year. They will both be sorely missed and the current Committee and myself wish them Andy Featherstone all the best for the future. Barbi will still be involved with the club and will be assisting her successor with the Conservation port- folio whilst they are learning the ropes. The loss of both Murrie and Barbi will be leav- ing gaps in the Committee and we would really like to encourage members to come forward and assist on the 2015 Committee. Whilst not a glamourous job, it is a very necessary part of running the Wits Bird Club so please help if you can. At the Bosberaad in October the Commit- tee decided to revive the search for a po- 4 Longest Tick News Report: “Just over a month ago, nobody had even By Rolf Wiesler considered Red-necked Buzzard as a bird that might have occurred within the So what has been your “longest tick” since Southern African sub region, but then the you started birding? photos surfaced of a bird that was photo- No, I don’t mean a tick that was 2cm long graphed on 28 July 2014 in the Buffalo Re- in your bird book due to a bumpy road serve in Namibia and everything changed. or updating your book in candle light (and not because this was romantic but rather due to the fact that electricity has not reached the part of darkest Africa you were birding in). What I mean is from the time you saw the bird, how long did it take before you ticked your book and high-fived your spouse for a lifer. Okay, so most spouses don’t under- stand this high-five practice but believe me they get used to it eventually……. Red-necked Buzzard - photo by Rolf I thought we had held the record some Wiesler time ago while we were birding in Mo- It seems like this record has inspired a num- zambique. We had just seen a Common ber of birders to go back through their old Cuckoo, which I photographed, when photographs and it would appear that Karin (my wife) and Grahame Snow spot- there are now 4 records of this species ted another cuckoo and this one looked which in chronological order are: smaller and different. After photographing this second bird we spent a good time try- • 18 June 2008 – Kgalagadi Transfrontier ing to positively identify it, using the field Park guides we had at hand. On returning to • 11 August 2012 - Mahango Game Re- South Africa we were still not sure, so Gra- serve Namibia hame sent the photos to various experts for their input, including a cuckoo expert • 11 July 2014 - Chobe National Park Bot- (you get one of those?) in America. swana Final verdict - Lesser Cuckoo and five min- • 28 July 2014 - Buffalo Reserve Namibia utes of fame. Interesting that all records span roughly a 2 Even for me, a non-birder, this wait was month period over mid-winter. Perhaps a excruciating but well worth it in the pattern is forming and these birds actually end. However, this record was recently move south into the sub region during the smashed….. austral winter”. On 8 September 2014 Trevor Hardaker I read this update, but it meant very little reported the following in his SA Rare Bird to me….. 5 The next day we received a call from Gra- Of course this disrupted all my lists, which hame, who had also read the report and are in date order (the date I photo- wanted to discuss a “sighting” with us, so graphed the bird as a lifer). Anyhow, the I promptly handed the phone to Karin. Red-necked Buzzard became number Listening to the one-sided conversation 600 photo lifer, moving the Golden Pipit to and seeing Karin’s excitement I knew that number 700. I am slowly moving closer to something was up. the 800 mark – maybe in the next exciting episode…. After hanging-up Karin went to her “re- cords” to look for a date, and then asked me to check my photos as she was sure I had taken some. The photos she wanted to check were of an odd looking buzzard that we had seen near Ngepi Lodge, Caprivi, on 8 March 2009. At the time we all realised there was something strange about the bird as it was “out-of-area” and looked different. I had managed one long range photo- graph of it sitting in a tree before everyone bailed out the vehicle, ignoring the possi- bility of dangerous animals and long lost landmines, etcetera. I was nominated to take the lead (I can be attacked first) so I could get a “better shot”. Luckily I man- aged to take a few as it flushed. After much discussion and by process of elimination (of the known buzzards that occur in the area) we concluded that it was a juvenile/aberrant Augur Buzzard. The photographs were duly named and filed away – until 2014. These same photos were then sent to Tre- vor who confirmed that our Augur Buz- zard was in fact a Red-necked Buzzard. Our sighting was in summer, which also disproved the notion of mid-winter move- ments of these birds into the sub region. So try to beat this record…….. five years af- ter seeing a bird we now have a lifer (luck- ily we all remember the sighting well). 6 us any longer. Zululand Higlights Sue and I together with our good friends, Text and Photos by Anthony David and Margie, were staying at Mave- Cavanagh la Game Lodge, which is one of half a dozen private lodges in the Zululand Rhino Reserve.
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