Imagine you are busy birding and walking in a field with low shrub vegetation in the southern Free State or in the Central Karoo and your attention is drawn to a constantly high pitched tee-tee-tee bird sound near you. Suddenly a small prinia-like bird with a long tail flies out of a low bush or runs like a mouse in front you. This bird is likely to be the elusive Rufous-eared Warbler…

Since the early 19^th century collecting bird eggs was a popular hobby for naturalists worldwide. Many private collections were later donated to museums for curation.  Egg collecting and the study of eggs is known as oology which is one aspect of ornithological research. Egg collectors mostly collect eggs from birds’ nests for their own private collections.

Adaptations in bill morphology, diet preferences and social structures: insights from some species in the Free State.

By Dawie de Swardt.

LBJ’s or “little brown jobs” in birding terms are cryptic or brownish birds and most of the time difficult to identify.  Larks, together with other generally drab-coloured birds such as pipits, warblers and cisticolas; are small to medium-sized passerines with such cryptic plumages.  They occur mostly in open, structurally simple habitats, ranging from desert and semi-deserts, the Karoo areas, to the moister transitional grasslands and savannah woodlands to the east. Many larks exhibit substrate colour-matching, the dorsal plumage in particular bearing a resemblance to the substrate of the environment it inhabits.

During August 2020 I underwent bird ringing training at the Oliewenhuis gardens.  I was trained in all aspects of bird ringing such as setting up nets and traps, removing trapped birds from nets without injuring the bird, taking measurements and recording data, and putting a ring on a bird. Museum ornithologist Dawie de Swardt conducted the training.