2nd July 2009: Reports from ABC representatives have been added to the Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda contact pages.
24th June 2009: The Morocco hotspots page has been updated to include further information about seeing Northern Bald Ibis Geronticus eremita at Tamri.
5th June 2009: Photos from Abdi Jama have been added to and brighten up the Somalia pages.
29th May 2009: A short birding report has been added to the Somalia visiting page.
25th May 2009: African Bird Club is delighted to welcome Birding and Beyond Safaris to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors
4th May 2009: A short update on visiting Raso island in Cape Verde to see Raso Lark Alauda razae can be found here
30th April 2009: A revised version of the popular ABC African Checklist 2009 can be found here
17th April 2009: References have been added from ABC Bulletin 16(1) March 2009
9th April 2009: References have been adeed from the recently published Malimbus 31(1)
6th April 2009: ABC 2009 Conservation Tour
ABC is delighted to announce a Conservation Tour to Sierra Leone organised by Rockjumper Birding Tours. The tour will run from 9th-22nd December 2009 and profits will go to the ABC Conservation Fund. This is one of the first birding tours to Sierra Leone and target birds include White-necked Picathartes, Gola Malimbe, White-breasted Guineafowl and other Upper Guinea endemics. There are only a few places available so if you are interested, you should contact Rockjumper at info@rockjumper.co.za now.
2nd April 2009: A major update of the Canary Island references has been completed.
5th March 2009: Several downloadable papers have been added at Madeira references and Cape Verde references.
4th March 2009: We are pleased to announce the addition of new search capabilities on the African Bird Image Database, AFBID which you can see and use at http://www.birdquest.net/afbid/index.php
The database contains over 10,700 images from Africa of over 1,800 species. The new capability has extended the database to include the addition of a country field for each image. This is coupled with a powerful search capability which allows the user to view all species in a particular country, or all images of a species or family within a country. This is in addition to the free form text search capabilities which were already available.
The countries with the largest number of images currently are South Africa with 2,000, Kenya with 850, Namibia with 800, Tanzania with 750 and Ethiopia with 725. At the other extreme, the following countries have fewer than 10 images: Algeria; Ascension; Burundi; Cape Verde; Central African Republic; Chad; Comoros; Congo (Brazzaville); Equatorial Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Mauritania; Rwanda; Somalia; Swaziland, Togo and Tristan da Cunha.
We hope that these new capabilities will be useful both for people interested in travelling to a country, for ornithologists examining plumage variations in different parts of Africa and for anyone with a general interest in the birds of the Region.
Please continue to submit your images to the database and we look forward to receiving good quality images from the less well represented countries.
25th February 2009: A major improvement has been made to the Somalia hotspots page.
25th February 2009: We are pleased to announce a new ID Challenge at http://www.africanbirdclub.org/countries/challenge.html. The prizes are one day guided birding in Cape Town, South Africa or a copy of Southern African Birdfinder by Callan Cohen, Claire Spottiswoode and Jonathan Rossouw; one year African Bird Club membership. Can you please resubmit your entry if you have already completed one recently for this challenge.
18th February 2009: 2 Trip reports from Ghana have been added and can be viewed and downloaded.
9th February 2009: African Bird Club is pleased to welcome Ashanti African Tours to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors.
9th February 2009: A significant number of references have been added to the Azores reference page.
3rd Febraury 2009: The African Bird Club has representatives in 38 countries of which 28 are in Africa. We are encouraging reps to send regular reports of activities in their countries. Several have been received with interesting photographs and added to the contact pages of the countries concerned. You can see these on the Djibouti, Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda pages.
22nd January 2009: A wildlife survey of the Ahaggar Mountains was carried out in March 2005. The survey concentrated on mammal sightings but bird observations are documented also. There is useful information regarding the logistics of travel in Algeria. The report can be downloaded from the Algeria visiting page.
24th December 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news section of South Africa (a major update), Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
22nd December 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news section of The Seychelles and Sierra Leone.
21st December 2008: A comprehensive list of references has been added to Madeira references.
Recent sightings have been added to the news section of Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé & Príncipe and Senegal.
17th December 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news section of Mauritius, Morocco and Mozambique.
15th December 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news section of Madeira, Mali and Mauritania.
5th December 2008: A large number of recent sightings have been added to the news section of Kenya.
28th November 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of The Gambia, Ghana and Guinea pages.
27th November 2008: New references have been added to the Cape Verde reference page.
24th November 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Cape Verde Islands, Egypt and Ethiopia.
23rd November 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Cameroon and Canary Islands.
22nd November 2008: References from Malimbus 30(2) have been added to the country reference sections.
19th November 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Ascension Island, Azores and Botswana.
9th November 2008: The BirdLife International partners have been updated on the country contact pages.
7th November 2008: A major update to the Madeira pages with many new photographs has been completed following a recent visit to the island.
5th November 2008: Many of you use AFBID, the African Bird Image Database at http://www.birdquest.net/afbid in order to look at photographs of African birds, to help in identification, or to add your own images. The system has been in place for just over 3 years and over 500 photographers have posted a remarkable 10,000 photos of 1,800 species in this time. In the last year, we have tried to improve the quality of the images and some of the older and less good images have been deleted. We are of course still looking for good images of the species which are already on the database and of the several hundred species on the African Region checklist for which we do not have photos.
For much of the 3 years, the functions of the system have remained as implemented originally but in recent months, we have begun to make some modifications. The first of these changes was the addition of French language species names in the master database and their inclusion below each image. Since this change, we have noticed an increase in the number of users in France and we hope that it will help people in other French speaking countries. A further change was to improve the way in which comments are added. We had reached a point where the level of Spam comments was intolerable and we needed to tighten our security arrangements.
We have many more ideas for new functions and plan to implement these through time although the availability of funds will determine the speed of implementation. Meanwhile, we would appreciate your feedback about the system and changes which you would like to see.
4th November 2008: The details of ABC reps have been updated on the country contacts pages. Reports have been added to the contacts pages for Ascension Island, Madagascar, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
9th October 2008: Several references have been added to the Guinea reference page.
1st October 2008: A superb photo of Cape Verde Shearwater Calonectris (diomedea) edwardsii by Beneharo Rodríguez Martín has been added to the Cape Verde species page.
30th September 2008: The contents of ABC Bulletins 15(1) and 15(2) have been added.
19th September 2008: BirdLife International partners added and updated on the country contact pages.
10th September 2008: New references on the subject of Raso Lark Alauda razae have been added to the Cape Verde Islands reference page.
7th September 2008: African Bird Club is pleased to welcome Crystal Safaris, Limosa Holidays and Lake Kitandara Tours and Travel to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors.
6th September 2008: References from ABC Bulletin 15(2) have been added to the country pages.
5th September 2008: New references and downloadable papers have been added to the Cape Verde Islands reference page.
25th August 2008: A major new section on the birds of Santiago Island, Cape Verde has been added to the hotspots page which you can find here.
19th August 2008: New references and downloadable papers have been added to the Madeira reference page.
18th August 2008: More habitat and species photos have been added to the Cape Verde pages here.
9th August 2008: Habitat and species photos have been added to the Cape Verde pages.
6th August 2008: New photographs from Mary Crickmore have been added to the Mali pages and a photo from Paul Roberts has been added to the Tanzania pages.
24th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of St Helena, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
21st July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Senegal, The Seychelles and Sierra Leone.
14th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Nigeria, Rwanda and São Tomé and Príncipe.
10th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Mozambique, Namibia and Niger.
9th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Madagascar, Madeira, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius and Morocco.
8th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of The Gambia, Ghana and Kenya.
A report from an ABC conservation project to survey the status of Amani Sunbird in Arabuko Sokoke forest in Kenya using standard point count techniques has been added here.
5th July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Egypt and Gabon. A paper for download has been added to the references section of Madeira.
4th July 2008: References from Scopus 21-24 have been added to the Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda reference pages.
3rd July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Cameroon, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands and Congo (Brazzaville).
2nd July 2008: Recent sightings have been added to the news sections of Ascension Island, Azores and Botswana.
29th May 2008: A paper on petrels of the genus pterodroma and a paper on Barn Owls on Cape Verde can be downloaded from the Madeira and Cape Verde references sections respectively.
29th May 2008: Information received from Rubén Barone Tosco has been added to the Cape Verde Islands hotspots section.
27th May 2008: Mary Crickmore has sent updates to the Mali hotspots page for The Niger River at Kabala and The Sotuba Research Station.
27th May 2008: Rubén Barone Tosco has sent .pdf versions of papers which have been added for download to the reference section of the Cape Verde Islands.
14th May 2008: The contents of ABC Bulletin 15(1) have been added to the country reference pages.
1st May 2008: A few species photos from Mary Crickmore have been added to the Mali pages.
21st April 2008: African Bird Club is pleased to welcome Ben's Ecological Safaris to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors.
21st April 2008: ABC Annual Report 2007
Copies of the Annual Report and Accounts for 2007 and a copy of the revised Constitution have been added to the website and can be seen here.
7th April 2008: The African Bird Club Conservation Fund has provided over £67,000 for conservation projects in Africa since its inception. Most of the funds were provided by generous donations from sponsors and members.
The list of projects which have been supported has been updated and you can see this at Conservation Projects.
For each award, A brief summary is shown which includes the project title, recipient, the country and the amount. Some of the projects in the list are shown in italics and you can find further details of these by clicking on the project titles.
22nd March 2008: African Bird Club is pleased to welcome Gorilla Safaris to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors.
18th March 2008: References from Malimbus 30(1) have been added to the country pages.
9th March 2008: Announcement of xeno-canto/Africa
We are pleased to announce a major new website for bird sounds of the African Region. This website is a derivative of xeno-canto, the leading website for the storage and retrieval of songs and calls of birds of the Neotropics. The development is a joint initiative between the xeno-canto designers and The African Bird Club and is supported long term by Naturalis, the National Museum of Natural History in The Netherlands.
You will find the new website at www.xeno-canto.org/africa or by following the links from the ABC home page. You will see that xeno-canto/Africa has comprehensive features which include powerful search and mapping capabilities, the ability to identify mystery songs and community search (which species sing at the same time?). It will be worth your while spending some time exploring the available functions.
The species list and naming conventions are those in the January 2008 version of the African Bird Club checklist and you can view or download a full copy of this checklist from the ABC website.
Users of xeno-canto/Africa are expected to be birders, ornithologists, researchers, tourists and anyone with a general interest in the birds of the region. Its ultimate success however is dependent on the expertise and goodwill of those of you who are prepared to share your recordings, as well as your knowledge and enthusiasm for African bird songs. We hope that many of you will register as members and begin to upload your recordings, help others with difficult identification challenges and try and solve mystery bird problems. The full capabilities of xeno-canto/Africa will become more useful of course as the number of members and recordings grows.
We view the website very much as a work in progress. The development work so far has concentrated on building a robust and functionally rich system but there is much more work to be done. We welcome your thoughts and comments (which you can post on the forum section of xeno-canto/Africa) as these will help us prioritise future developments.
We hope that xeno-canto/Africa will become a valuable resource for all people with an interest in the birds of the African Region. We also hope that you will enjoy using xeno-canto/Africa and will return to the site frequently, listen to new recordings and make use of its capabilities.
3rd March 2008: The visiting pages of all countries have been updated with the planned tours of our Corporate Sponsors.
28th February 2008: African Bird Club is pleased to welcome MKA Ecology to its growing list of Corporate Sponsors.
16th February 2008: A new map which shows the distribution of the endemic birds of the Comoros Islands can be found at Comoros.
31st January 2008: The country checklists have proved to be extremely popular and there have been some 5,000 downloads since the system went operational about a year ago. We are pleased to inform you that a new version of the database is operational with 78 checklists. New country checklists have been added for Ascension, Comoros and islands, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Prince Edward Islands, Rodrigues, Swaziland and Tristan da Cunha and islands.
There is now a checklist for all countries within the ABC region. The database which supports the checklists has around 100,000 entries and the ABC species list and taxonomy is consistent with Peter Lack's January 2008 ABC African checklist. We will continue to update the records with published and peer-reviewed information and add new functions to the operational system from time to time. You will find the country checklists at checklists.
27th January 2008: A number of photos of IBAs and species have been added to the Ghana pages.
19th January 2008: Finding the Endemic Kulikoro (Mali) Firefinch in Dogon Country
This interesting article and photographs by Mary Crickmore have been added to the Mali hotspots page.
8th January 2008: The Gambia pages have undergone a major revision by incorporating information from the Gambia Birding Group.The Gambia Birding Group is a not for profit organisation which: provides information about practical aspects of visiting The Gambia for wildlife trips and about birding throughout The Gambia; supports conservation for wildlife; provides contact points for birders and naturalists visiting The Gambia. Because of falling membership, the Gambia Birding Group is unable to remain a cost effective organisation, is being wound up and transferring its assets to the African Bird Club but you can still visit its website at Gambiabirding for the foreseeable future.
4th January 2008: The Gambia conservation page has been completely rewritten and work is in progress to update the visiting page.
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