Zandvlei Trust

My Bird Patch at Zandvlei.

This a working partnership with Zandvlei Trust, the ADU and the City of Cape Town.

Click on the logo to go to the website.

The entrance to the Intaka Island Enviro education Centre.                                   new 24/05/2013.

Saturday  8 June 2013 starting at are you aware of our MyBirdPatch presentation at Intaka Island Enviro Centre, Century City, Cape Town.

If you are interested as a citizen scientist, novice or experienced birder to find out more about MyBirdPatch and how it works. The details here http://www.adu.org.za/news.php?id=3992

What is MyBirdPatch
MyBirdPatch is a web-based platform for birders and citizen scientists to collect and curate their bird lists, for any area they define.

Who can use it
Any birders, or citizen scientist, who wants to contibute their lists to the growing knowledgebase of bird distribution and counts in Africa.

Why do we do it
To monitor the distribution changes over time, and attempt to track hotspots of bird populations in Africa over time.

Keeping lists for MyBirdPatch is simple and fun:

• Decide on a patch – garden, greenbelt, a park, local nature reserve, school, the grounds of a hospital, golf course, wetland, a section of river, your walking route around your neighbourhood, or even the route you walk every day between getting off public transport and your office. Basically any well-defined space from the size of a garden to a few tens of hectares.
• Make a list of birds in the order that you observe them in your patch - but a simple tick list of species will also be fine.
• Make a note of the start time and how long you spend observing. There is no minimum or maximum time but as patches are small anything from 10 mins to a few hours should probably suffice.
• Make notes of the weather and/or any disturbance factors which you think may have an impact on the survey.
• You only need to record the species once (presence/absence). A list can be made throughout the day and any new species recorded during the day can be added to the list.
• Where possible, try and estimate the number of individuals of each species. It is also possible to enter rough estimates based on the ranges approximately 1 - 9, approximately 10 - 99, approximately 100 - 999, etc.
• You can mix and match. You can enter counts or estimates for some species, but simply have others on the list. It is OK to say there were two African Black Ducks, the small flock of Common Starlings that flew past contained roughly 10 - 99 birds and Red-eyed Doves were present (without any estimate of numbers).
• Lists should be compiled over a one-day period, and can be repeated once a week, and/or once a month, depending on your schedule.
• Repeated visits should, where possible, be done in the same way and in the same amount of time. The golden rule is to be consistent.
• You can also take photos of any interesting species you may find, and/or of your patch, as these can be uploaded later when you capture and submit your card on-line.

Registration and passwords

To capture and submit your lists, view your cards and vote for top images you need to login to the website.
If you are already a registered ADU participant (with an ADU number), you just need to apply for a password.

To do this:

• Go to the website http://mybirdpatch.adu.org.za 
• Click on 'Register'.
• Under 'Existing ADU observers and resetting a password' type in your email address, tab to the next field. Your ADU number should automatically appear in the box.
• Click on the 'Apply for password' button.
• A temporary password will be emailed to you.
• Once you receive the password, go back to the website and click on 'Login' (top right of screen).
• Type in your email address, and the password (your ADU number will automatically be filled in) and click on 'Remember me' (this will save your email address should you logout and then come back to the website later).
• Then click on 'Login'.
• The 'Add a new survey' and 'My cards' menu options will now appear.
• Click on the 'Add a new survey' link to define a new patch and add your list.

The designated Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve MyBirdPatch areas. You may adopt one of these
areas or make you own boundary of your patch within one of these boundaries.

Just go for it, and have fun! 

photographs by Greg Morgan.

Pied Avocet.                            Caspian Tern.                                     White backed Duck.

For more information go to the website http://mybirdpatch.adu.org.za 

If you have any queries please contact Doug Harebottle 

Also contact Gavin Lawson  if you have any other questions.