Birders love to find rare birds; few things match the excitement
of coming across something completely unexpected.
But the obsession with rarities can result in population
changes in more common birds being overlooked. Breeding
bird surveys in Europe, Asia and North America show
that many bird populations are in flux, but what do we
know about the status of common birds in South Africa?
How Hadeda Ibises rely on
water in soil to sense their
prey and the impact this
has had on their expansion
across southern Africa.
A comparison of bird communities in
and around four South African cities
bill|breeding|Cape Glossy Starling|crops|David Allan|diet|Dwarf Bittern|Edward Selfe|feathered locust|Hadeda Ibis|intra-African|Jennifer Lean|Lamprotornis|lizard|migrant|pandemic|pest control|prey|Red-billed Queleas|Werner Conradie
Black Sparrowhawk|COVID-19|David Hoddinott|Hadeda Ibis|Jennifer Lean|Little Sparrowhawk|Lockdown|Malachite Sunbird|wood-hoopoe|woodpecker|Yellow-billed Kite
A new study from the University of Cape Town has shown that fossil
relatives of ostriches and emus had a remarkable foraging ecology that
was more like that of the Hadeda Ibis than their giant flightless living
relatives. What is even more fascinating is that they may have inherited
this unique ‘sixth sense’ from their non-avian dinosaur relatives.