A group of four birders from the Lakes Club Bird on the Garden Route came to Uniondale to do some atlassing for five days during November. This means recording all sightings of birds seen in an area known as a pentad which is a 5 minutes of a degree square on a survey map on a particular day, with the species seen each hour being recorded.
The area they covered, for atlassing purposes, included De Vlugt, Prince Alfred’s Pass, Avontuur, Uniondale Poort, the town of Uniondale, along the Willowmore road and across to Barandas and the foot of the Swartberg. These are the first atlas cards which have been submitted for these areas in the two years that the SABAP2 ( Atlas project) has been running.
They recorded 150 species of birds, which is excellent. They also saw some unusual birds that the SABAP2 Headquarters in Cape Town are very interested in. In particular they saw a Red Phalarope, which is a rare sea bird – what it was doing on a small dam near Haarlem is a mystery! The sighting is featured in the Southern African November Rare Bird News Report, and it is also now on the Rare Birds website with its location. Haarlem is now famous!
For a downloadable list of birds in the Uniondale area, compiled by the Lakes Bird Club Atlas Team click here.
For more information please call Pat Nurse at the Lakes Bird Club by email : jgn@lantic.net.
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