Birdcount at modisa

For 4 years we have participated in the birdcount initiative with Birdlife Botswana. Their aim is to get many locations with keen birders to participate and collect valuable data throughout the country. Many of the participants are simply bird enthusiasts, and projects like this are often referred to as “citizen science” since anyone from the general public can participate.

Since birds are generally free to be wherever they like due to their ability to fly, their presence/absence is a crucial indicator for ecosystem health. Many of our mammals or other terrestrial wildlife are often forced to remain in the respective national parks and reserves due to national borders, fences, roads, towns, or water bodies. Therefore, birds can give us information which they can’t.

We are friends with the organizers of this count and in our region (Kgalagadi) we are the only participants so far, which makes it so much more important to carry out these counts. They are done every February and November.

As some of you probably remember, we have recently also become the second vulture safe zone in Botswana and among all of our birds, vultures are truly one of the most fascinating ones. We will bring much more information about them and their role in our ecosystem in future posts.