NiBDaB News May 2014
27 May 2014 [JBr]We regret that the NiBDaB was again off-line for a couple of weeks, due to problems on the side of the service provider. We hope there will be no further interruptions for a long time.
New photo species added this past month (no picture in the NiBDaB before) are Brown Babbler, Little Owl and Secretarybird. The latter is an image from 1985, the last known record in Niger is from 2006. The species may now be extinct in Niger.
That Brown Babbler is a new photo species may surprise you, as it did us. You can check in the Niger checklist (10th menu option on the left): species without a picture icon following their name have no image in the NiBDaB yet. Do send us your pictures, also of common species: the more pictures we have of a species, the better the impression one can get of that species.
In addition to our usual faithful contributors we received more than 1,000 records from the Sahara Conservation Fund. The NiBDaB is now 5 records short of 47,000.
Some of you may have already noted a new feature: dates are now presented in two columns, day of the month and year. This allows quick sorting on time of year, which is of interests for the arrival and departure of migrants, and for determining breeding seasons. Sorting on one column can be done on screen, by clicking on a column heading. Click again to get the reverse order. For sorting on more than one column, e.g. first on breeding (yes/no) and then on time of year, first use the function for downloading the data of interest in an Excel file. Use of this function has already shown the following
- Yellow-billed Kites (only 5 breeding records!) seem to start breeding well into the dry season (Nov or later) and have big young by June.
- Mourning Doves (only 8 breeding records!) seem to nests most of the year, having been observed carrying twigs in Feb (2x), Aug, Oct, Nov (2x) and having eggs in June.
- Speckled Pigeons seem to breed all year round , though for June-August we only have one breeding record.
Enjoy your birding,
Joost and Ulf
brouwereac AT online.nl
Edited: 2014-05-27 [JBr]