Motivation

A lot of interesting, fascinating and important-to-science observations are noted on SABIRDNET, but there is a lack of a formal system for archiving this information. An even larger number of these observations must be made every single day, but are never reported anywhere. This system aims to provide a non-threatening way in which everyone in southern Africa can make their contribution.

Guidelines

If you are not sure if something is worth reporting, then report it.

Report the occurrence of any species outside of its range, as shown in The Atlas of Southern African Birds, or in one of the standard field guides. Also report the occurrence of any bird out of season. Report first and last sightings of migrants, in spring and autumn.

At this stage, the area of interest of this project is southern Africa, defined in the usual birding way, Africa south of the Kunene and Zambezi Rivers.

You can also report any other interesting observations you would like to place on record: breeding, unusually large concentrations of waterbirds, heronries, flocks of queleas, roosts of swallows, terns, etc.

At times, when there is an irruption of a species – for example, Dusky Sunbirds into the Western Cape – we will broadcast a special message as widely as we can, and try to capture as much information as possible.

In addition, we will develop a list of species for which all/most sightings ought to be reported. For example, it would be valuable to have a record of all sightings of Bateleurs outside of the large protected areas. Suggestions of species to go onto this list will be welcome. As an initial basis, use the list from the new Red Data book of "Critically Endangered", "Endangered" and "Vulnerable" species.

As time goes by, we might need to change the reporting guidelines, but this will depend on volumes of sightings, the input and advice we receive from users, and the experiences we have processing the data at the ADU. We might develop categories of observations.

What will happen to the information? It will be added to a on-line database and it will be "instantly" available to other users. The processing is automated, and we will be accepting observations at face value.

The compilations of sightings will be archived on the website. We will regard the information as being in the public domain, so that anyone who wants to compile an overview of the migration pattern of a species in a season will be free to do so, and to publish the result in a newsletter or journal. In fact, our aim would be to encourage people to undertake these syntheses. The ADU newsletter, Bird Numbers, would welcome articles of this nature.

For species and families for which there is active research or conservation actions, the observations will be forwarded to the appropriate people. So all sightings of Wattled Crane, a "Critically Endangered" species, will go off to the Endangered Wildlife Trust's South African Crane Working Group.

This is not the place to report "national rarities". These should go to BirdLife South Africa's Rarities Committee for adjudication. What we want to capture here are the "second-tier" rarities!

What to do

Fill in the Add record form. There is a straightforward drop down menu for selecting the species. For place, use any or all of the three possible alternatives: place, QDGC and coordinates. The name of the place could be suburb and city, or farm and district. The QDGC (quarter degree grid cell) refers to the standard southern African system for 1:50 000 map sheets, as was used during the bird atlas project. If GPS coordinates are available, please give them, but preferably in the form dd mm ss.ss S dd mm ss.ss E, i.e. degrees, minutes, seconds and decimal fractions of a second, latitude first, and then longitude. Type your observation in the space provided. You will need to press "enter" at the end of each line. Although this space is fairly flexible, please do be brief. When you have finished, hit "send".