it was an innocuous coffee meeting sometime in 2022 with my good friend Cliff Dorse that set the ball rolling. The Cape Bird Club would be celebrating its 75th anniversary the following year (which makes it the second oldest bird club in South Africa) and I was chatting to Cliff about doing something special to mark the milestone. The club had celebrated previous milestones with gala evenings, special trips to exotic locations and, of course, merchandise and banners, but I wanted to do something different, something that was local and would celebrate the diversity of birdlife in our beautiful city. I had been thinking about some kind of birding challenge that would get people out into the field to enjoy birds in the way that I do, which involves being immersed in the natural areas we're fortunate to have around us in Cape Town.
ABOVE The Klipspringer Trail just south of Gordon's Bay was in the south-eastern corner of the challenge area and well worth exploring for fynbos endemics.
INSET One of the most popular rarities during the year was Pectoral Sandpiper. This one was at Strandfontein.
As an employee of the City of Cape Town specialising in biodiversity management, a champion of nature conservation and a fanatical birder, Cliff was keen to collect data on bird diversity in the city as motivation for the planning of future conservation areas. For finding the value of habitats, he knew there were no better people than birders searching for new and exciting species.
So Cliff and I came up with the idea of a birding big year within Cape Town’s boundaries.
This story is from the May/June 2024 edition of African Birdlife.
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This story is from the May/June 2024 edition of African Birdlife.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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.
