If at first you don't succeed ...

… try, try again!

With the water of Sua Pan evaporating fast, Dr Graham McCulloch’s chances of capturing several Lesser Flamingos to fit them with satellite tracking devices were fading too (see previous post dated 21/06/2010). However, the Independence Day long-weekend provided near ideal conditions for a last chance at flamingo capture – the remaining water was restricted to small pools in the Nata River, and four adult flamingos were present together with a number of immatures and juveniles. The challenge was to catch these adult birds before they left the area, so that data would become immediately available on their regional movements, but the window of opportunity to catch them was small ….

One of the few pools of water remaining in northern Sua Pan (Photo: P Hancock)

Long trap-lines were set in the remaining pools with the help of Nicky Bousfield, a qualified bird ringer with years of experience handling and caring for birds of all shapes and sizes. Success was immediate with one adult and several young birds being caught on the first day; the adult was fitted with a PTT backpack and ringed and then released. It remained in the area with the other flamingos, thereby enabling us to see how it reacted to its new hardware; the device fitted comfortably and apart from scrutinizing it closely and preening the feathers around it, the bird seemed quite unconcerned by its presence.

#50 with backpack slightly visible and its antenna protruding backwards (Photo: P Hancock)

The young birds were not targeted for the exercise as they are too small to comfortably carry the satellite transmitter; their capture was purely incidental, but nevertheless they were ringed before being released in the hope that they may still provide information on longevity and sources of mortality.

A juvenile Lesser Flamingo sports identifying rings (Photo: P Hancock)

After the initial success, the remainder of the flamingo group – particularly the adults – was wary, so the team (supplemented by a few local community members) tried a different capture technique. A long mist net, borrowed previously from researcher Tim Osborne in Namibia, was submerged in one of the pools with the aim of triggering it manually as the flamingos walked over it.

The net being quietly set at one of the remaining pools (Photo: P Hancock)

This however was not successful, and with time running out, we reverted to our original method of using the long traplines. Several more immatures and juveniles were caught, but unfortunately no adults.

The way the project stands at present, there are three adult Lesser Flamingos in total with satellite transmitters, and another three spare transmitters that will have to be fitted to flamingos next season. Some information is already coming in from the project, so watch this space for regular updates.

Annual BirdLife Botswana dinner

The annual BirdLife Botswana dinner will be on Saturday 25th September at 19:00 for 19:30 at the Gaborone Golf Club.

The guest speaker will be Mark Anderson, Director of BirdLife South Africa, speaking on the Lesser Flamingo project at Kamfers Dam near Kimberly, where he and colleagues managed to create an artificial island that was successfully adopted by the flamingos as the fourth breeding site for the species in Africa! This is a truly wonderful conservation achievement, but one which cost him his previous job!

Dress will be smart casual with a cost of P150 per ticket and all members are invited to attend. It should be an excellent affair and is one of the main events on our calendar. Members should buy their tickets early to avoid disappointment. They are on sale at the BLB Office in Kgale Siding and at the shop in the Craft Market, Broadhurst. There will be eight people to a table so you may reserve your table when purchasing your tickets. We have 80 tickets to sell on a first-come-first-served basis.

First catch your flamingo!

Dr Graham McCulloch has been monitoring the globally threatened Lesser Flamingo in the Makgadikgadi Pans for over a decade and, as is always the case with research, the more you find out about your subject, the more interesting it becomes and the more you realize how little you know!

One fact that is apparent from the monitoring data is that Lesser Flamingo numbers have been steadily increasing. A count of 77,491 Lesser Flamingos at Sua in 2009 exceeded the total estimate for Southern Africa (~65,000). This raises the interesting question: Has the Southern African flamingo population increased by improved breeding success due to better conditions, or has the local population been augmented by an influx of birds from further afield? Because flamingos are highly nomadic, and can travel vast distances, it has long been speculated that birds from East Africa sometimes visit Southern Africa, and vice versa. This could mean that there is one large population with birds moving to and from the best feeding and breeding conditions on the continent; if this were the case, it would have important implications for the conservation of the species.

To find out whether there is any connection between the Southern African and East African flamingo populations, two different but equally innovative approaches could be adopted. Firstly, now that DNA analysis is possible and commonplace, an investigation into the genetics of birds from both areas could tell if there is one large, intermixed population, or two distinctly separate groups. Recent studies comparing the DNA of populations from both regions, using blood samples from the Makgadikgadi, collected by Graham during some ringing excercises some years ago, and samples taken from the soda lakes in East Africa suggest similar DNA and favour a connection between the two populations, or the existence of one interconnected population. Secondly, and also resulting from technological advances, it could be possible to fit individual flamingos with tiny transmitters that send a signal to orbiting satellites which pinpoint their position and relay the information back to Earth! Incredible though this may seem, small transmitters weighing a mere 35 grams are now available with minute but efficient solar panels, that can be fitted to relatively small birds such as the Lesser Flamingo, and this is the approach adopted by Graham in his research.

During 2001, satellite transmitters were deployed on eight Lesser Flamingos from Sua Pan; these were battery-powered (without solar panels) and during the two years that they continued to function, Graham was able to determine that birds from Sua move all over Southern Africa, to the west coast of Namibia, Kamfers Dam in South Africa and even into southern Mocambique. Frustratingly however, none of these birds moved to East Africa! This does not mean that the Lesser Flamingos from Sua Pan don’t go to East Africa – only that these few individuals did not go there during the period of the study!

Base camp for flamingo capture (Photo: P Hancock)

Recently, Graham has been collaborating with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and they have provided six of the latest solar-charged transmitters for fitting on Lesser Flamingos. This is easier said than done – just how does one catch a free-flying flamingo in the vastness of the Makgadikgadi Pans? In 2001, Graham caught the birds by setting hundreds of small noose-traps in the flamingos favoured feeding areas in the shallows of Sua Pan – once a bird’s foot becomes entangled in the noose, it can be captured without injury or undue stress. But there is more to this technique than betrayed by a simple sentence, as can be imagined! Firstly, it is important to identify the preferred feeding areas on a daily basis, and then set the snares at first light – thereafter, it is a question of waiting patiently at a distance until the birds eventually return and one gets caught!

The first flamingo capture exercise this year took place during early May, just as a practice run, since it was apparent that suitable conditions for initiating this part of the project were returning. It is important to fit the transmitters just before Sua Pan dries up, so that the birds can be relatively easily caught, and will soon start moving away from the Pan – it is pointless paying for the expensive downloads of data from the satellite if the birds are not travelling more than a few hundred metres from one feeding area to another! Two adults were caught in the same number of days – and then late rains put paid to any further capture attempts as Sua Pan filled with water!

A flamingo in the hand is worth measuring in as many ways as possible (Photo: P Hancock)

By mid-June, the shallow, saline waters of Sua had evaporated sufficiently to permit a second capture attempt to be made. Alas, after a few days of setting the trap-lines early in the morning and retrieving them in the evening, no flamingos had been caught - round 1 to the researchers, round 2 to the flamingos!

This is where the project stands at present – we are all looking forward to round 3 so that the real work can begin – that of unraveling the movements of these flambouyantly successful nomads. This blog will provide regular updates, particularly once data become available showing where the birds are, so that the information on their movements can be used to better conserve the species.

Weary team members return at sunset - empty-handed (Photo: P Hancock)