Babblers

Editorial

From afar I try to keep track of the development of BirdLife Botswana and am constantly amazed just how the organisation has grown. Thanks are due of course to our Director, Kabelo Senyatso, all the staff and volunteers and not to be forgotten, to our tireless Chairman, Harold Hester, who has steered the fledgling organisation through to the large organisation it is today with its increasing number of staff. A large organisation is not the goal; the real goal is an organisation with enthusiastic effective staff, an organisation respected by government and one that makes a real difference to bird conservation. We seem to be well on our way to reaching this goal.

In a semi-desert country birds are always moving about in response to rainfall. The recent drought has certainly caused some birds to move away from normal haunts and others to turn up in strange places. Particular excitements have included sightings of Burchell’s Coursers at Lake Ngami and at Dautsa Flats west of Sehitwa by Mark Muller, Ali Flatt, Richard Randall and Chris Brewster. This species has previously been a rarity only in the south and southwest. A real surprise was the Rose-coloured Starling seen by Robert Self and Katie Hoff among Wattled Starlings on the golf course at Mowana Lodge at Kasane. This was the first record of this species for Botswana and only the second record from southern Africa. Common Quails at Lake Ngami and Stark’s Larks at Dautsa Flats are among other notable sightings (see records sections in this Babbler.

Contributions for Babbler continue to trickle in. This issue includes an important paper by Pete Hancock, Mark Muller and Brian Bridges on their surveys of breeding Lappet-faced Vultures in northern Botswana and a response by Dieter Oschadleus to a previous note in Babbler on Spectacled Weavers in the Okavango. There is also the regular waterbird counts report and a range of interesting notes on species such as Mosque Swallow, Ashy Tit, Swamp Boubou and Dusky Sunbird from Chris Brewster, Mark Muller, Richard Randall and Brian Rode.

Editor

EDITORIAL

Apart from the paper on waterbird counts which documents the counts for two years – from July 2008 to January 2010, there are no other substantive papers in this issue of Babbler. However, it contains many interesting notes and a backlog of sight and breeding records and early and late migrant dates from 2009 and 2010. Some of these records have been extracted from Tickbird so please continue supporting that and the more information you can provide, especially on numbers of any species seen, the better.

Among the notes are several from Mark Muller and Ali Flatt on birds in their Maun garden, at nearby pans and along the Thamalakane River. Richard Randall has contributed two notes – on the important Pink-backed Pelican breeding colony at Kanana and on sightings of Rufous-eared Warblers in the Kalahari. His description of Croaking Cisticolas that he saw in February in Kazuma Forest Reserve, serves as a good model for your own rarity sighting! Maria Eifler, a new contributor, writes of a memorable camping trip at Masetlheng Pan in SW Botswana; her sighting of an African Openbill was unusual but late 2009/early 2010 will go down in history as the season of a huge invasion of Openbills into South Africa. Nicky Bousfield provides an update on ‘her’ Tachila Nature Reserve near Francistown, a wonderful initiative whilst Chris Brewster writes on that elusive skulking species, the River Warbler which turned up at Notwane in SE Botswana. Both Mark Muller and Nicky Bousfield sent notes to me of Pygmy-Kingfishers that they had handled. Ann Gollifer, another new contributor, reported on the deaths of Palm Swifts after prolonged wet weather.

I do not always see Honeyguide, a journal on birds in Zimbabe, but have caught up with some interesting papers. Do please look at the summaries of some of these recent papers in Honeyguide which is an excellent publication. Many cover parts of Botswana or discuss birds that occur in Botswana.

Finally, I would like to thank our hard-working and far-sighted Chairman, Harold Hester for all that he has done and continues to do for BirdLife Botswana. I am sure this echoes the sentiments of us all. He does far more than any Chairman should be expected to do. I would also like to thank Doreen McColaugh for proof-reading this issue – a thankless task but she finds various things that I missed.

Stephanie J. Tyler, Editor
 

Editorial

I have been fascinated by the accounts of birds at Savuti Marsh and Channel over the last two years mainly from Gavin and Marjorie Blair, Richard Randall, Mark Muller and Ali Flatt. By June this year the marsh had however, dried up again and the channel just had a few remnant pools. In the 1990s and early 2000s I only ever saw this area dry. The changes from wetland to dryland or vice versa are one of the special features of Botswana. Lake Ngami, Lake Xau and the Boteti River are presently enjoying a rebirth with plenty of water and the birds to go with it but in the 1980s and early 1990s these wetlands were all but dry. The speed with which water birds find new wetlands is incredible. I was able to visit Lake Xau for the first time in January and was impressed with the sheer numbers of birds present and the luxuriant aquatic vegetation.

Reports of about 160 dead pelicans in late 2012 in Chobe suggested that botulism or something similar at Savuti Marsh might have been responsible. However, I understand that the birds may have been weakened by a heavy roundworm infestation; Lions and other predators had then been hunting the weakened birds.

There are countless news items about the persecution of birds around the world or their demise due to habitat destruction but one I found particularly depressing was the news about mass killing of Amur Falcons. These small falcons migrate from Siberia to Botswana and South Africa each year but are being slaughtered in their thousands as they pass through NE India. Some 12,000 to 14,000 are hunted daily in Nagaland, giving an estimated 120,000 to 140,000 killed every year during their passage through the State. As India is signatory to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) it must be beholden on the Government to stop this slaughter.

Southern African ornithology has recently lost some stalwarts. Bob Stjernstedt who came to the Slaty Egret workshop in Maun back in March 2011, died in his adopted country of Zimbabwe. British-born Phil Hockey from the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute, a prolific writer and lead author of the new Roberts also died prematurely. In Botswana we have sadly lost Sue Major who was a leading light for many years in the old Botswana Bird Club and secretary of the Rarities sub-committee. The death of Zenzele Dumisile Mpofu, Zee to her friends, was also a real shock. I first met Zee in 2003 when she had started work with DWNP in Maun and expressed an interest in helping with Slaty Egret research and roost counts. She was a wonderful warm and enthusiastic young woman and in March 2011 gave the presentation for Botswana at the Slaty Egret workshop in Maun. She was so keen to do more work on the egret but then was moved by DWNP to Kasane where she quickly settled in. Sadly a sudden aneurism cut her life short in December 2012.

Editorial

The continued mass poisoning of vultures in Botswana is so depressing and now with the drug dichlofenac being used in Europe too, it is hard to feel optimistic about the vultures’ future. In mid October Harold Hester mentioned to me that Dr Mark Bing had expressed his alarm at the reduction in numbers of vultures on the western side of the Delta.   In his words, “The meat poaching in the delta, commercial buffalo and giraffe, is SO SEVERE, and the Habu, Etsa and Gumare area has nearly no vultures left. I have had two weeks darting there, with NO VULTURES coming to elephant carcasses from Nata on the Zimbabwe border as well as the western Delta. Some Vulture restaurants like Du Plessis in Lobatse have to keep moving the restaurant around as humans are stealing the meat; he needs money for a secure fenced area to be built.”  Pete Hancock then told me of another 10 vultures including a Lappet-faced Vulture poisoned in the Chobe Enclave in early October.

Amid all the depressing news for Botswana’s wildlife we must rejoice at the fact that the Okavango Delta was listed as the 1,000th World Heritage site, on 22 June 2014, following the recommendation of IUCN, UNESCO’s advisory body on nature. The IUCN Director General, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, commented that “The Okavango Delta has long been considered one of the biggest gaps on the World Heritage list and IUCN is proud to have been able to provide support to this nomination. “We congratulate Botswana’s authorities on their extraordinary commitment to make this historic listing a reality.”

On a lighter note – it is not often that a new species is added to the southern African bird checklist so there was much excitement when a Red-necked Buzzard was identified in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia on 28 July 2014. Then a photograph of a Red-necked Buzzard was published taken by Peter McCalmont on 11 July 2014 – in Chobe National Park so it looked as though the first record went to Botswana. However, photographers dug out their old photos and other records of the buzzard materialised - in the KTP in June 2001, in Ngepi Camp in west Caprivi on 8 March 2009 and in the Mahango Game Reserve in Namibia on 11 August 2012. This species of buzzard is usually found in Angola so perhaps it is a regular visitor to the southern African region especially in the austral winter but had been over-looked as a phase of the very variable Steppe Buzzard.

Stephanie Tyler (Editor)

Editorial

I was sad to hear news from Pete Hancock that the heronry at Xakanaxa Lediba was abandoned when he visited the lagoon in early September 2015. Not a single Yellow-billed Stork, Marabou or Purple Heron was nesting there; moreover there was very little Water-Fig left due to Elephants having destroyed these trees. There were some Black-crowned Night Herons roosting there and although no nests were seen, Rufous-bellied Heron were almost certainly nesting in reeds. Thankfully there was better news from the Kanana heronry in the Okavango Delta where Pink-backed Pelicans were nesting at the start of August as described by Mark Muller and Ali Flatt. A hot fire in the area may however, have an impact that will become apparent during September.

The drought has taken its toll on wetlands with Gavin and Marjorie Blair and Richard Randall reporting that Savute Marsh and Channel in Chobe National Park were dry from July except for a few tiny pools. The note by Grant Reed on Lake Ngami also shows how quickly large water bodies such as this can revert to dry lake beds. Botswana is after all, subject naturally to cyclical periods of wet and dry.

Depressing news from the Chobe River where Gavin and Marjorie Blair reported that netting was widespread and when the water was gone there were heaps of fishing nets left discarded and tangled up all over the floodplains and dry river courses. Birds are then caught up in the nets and drown when the water returns. The Blairs collected and took to the dump as much discarded fishing net as they could but fishermen need to be more responsible. Marjorie in a letter also comments on the lack of pumping in pans in Chobe National Park.

Chris Brewster provides much of interest in his report of his trip along the Botswana/Namibia border fence east of Mohembo. Also of interest were aerial surveys over the Kafue Flats in Zambia by the International Crane Foundation for Wattled Cranes. In April 2015 the ICF estimated a population of 2,300 birds, the largest population in the world. Around 3,000 were noted there in the 1970s but numbers then declined. With an estimated 2,000 Wattled Cranes on the Lliuwa Plains and 1,200 in Bangweulu Swamp, Zambia holds 25% of this species of crane in Africa.

The summer of 2015/2016 was an excellent season for Spotted Crakes with birds turning up in South Africa but also at Phakalane sewage ponds and in the wetland at Gaborone Game Reserve. The most bizarre new bird species recorded in Botswana was a Great Frigate-bird at Gaghoo Diamond Mine on the north-east boundary of the CKGR in early December.

I apologise for several mistakes in the last issue of Babbler but the most notable was attributing the photos of landscape in the Orava region of Slovakia and of the nest and Lesser Spotted Eagle chick in Slovakia to Gavin and Marjorie Blair. These photos were in fact taken by researcher Dusan Karaska. The Blairs took the photos of the bird within Botswana. Thanks to Doreen McColaugh and Harold Hester for their help in editing and finishing this issue of Babbler.

Stephanie Tyler (Editor)

Editorial

I was sad to hear of the death of Michael Irwin in Zimbabwe aged 92 in September 2017. He was a huge figure in African ornithology.

There are so many bad news stories for birds that it was heartening to read of some good news. Back in November 2012 we were made aware that an estimated 100,000 Amur Falcons were netted and killed for food in Nagaland in north-east India when migrating to southern Africa. Happily BirdLife partners notably the Bombay Natural History Society and ministers in India have put an end to this slaughter through education and laws. We should see now more of these falcons surviving to reach Botswana.

BirdLife, as IUCN’s Red List authority recently updated the threat categories of bird species worldwide. Of 62 species that are doing worse than in the previous Red List three are found in Botswana. Two are only rarely recorded – Black Harrier that has gone from Vulnerable to Endangered and Mountain Pipit from No Concern to Near Threatened. The third species however, is Maccoa Duck, found in eastern and southern Africa. This duck, still not uncommon in southeast Botswana, has gone from Near Threatened to Vulnerable on account of recent rapid declines in parts of its range. All records of this duck are needed so if you see any Maccoa Duck anywhere in Botswana please let Chris Brewster, the BirdLife Botswana Recorder, know (number of birds, location and date). Usually they are noted on various dams and sewage ponds but they disperse to widely scattered pans when breeding.

I cannot believe that this issue is the 33rd that I have edited. I took on the role as Editor with some trepidation after Marc Herremans left back in 1997. Babbler No. 32 was my first effort and this is now No.64 and 21 years have passed. As I am no longer living in Botswana and so cannot as easily solicit articles and notes, I believe that there should be a new younger editor who is Botswana-based. Having said that, I do enjoy seeing all the articles that do come my way and the bird records and I hope that you find this issue of interest.

Firstly there is a fascinating atlas of birds in Kasane by Grzegorz Kopij from Namibia, showing detailed distribution maps for the various species around the town. Then Dieter Oschadleus responds to my note on the status of Orange-breasted Waxbills and he appeals for photos of nests of weavers and other species that are used by these waxbills. Chris Brewster as usual has supplied me with notes on all manner of things from Yellow-bellied Greenbuls at Kanye where Tracy Buchan, Andrew Hester and I discovered them back in 1999, to a wetland on the Metsemotlhaba River near Gaborone that he ‘discovered’ this year.

He also writes on a trip he made to the south-west of Botswana during July and August 2018 and on the status of Palaearctic migrants in south-eastern Botswana in the summer of 2017/2018. Chris also has put a lot of work into the Category A Rarity records, Category B and Interesting Records and the Breeding Records. Thanks Chris.

Stephanie Tyler (Editor)