Avian Demography Unit Department of Statistical Sciences University of Cape Town

A history of bird ringing results in southern Africa

Introduction
List of species ringing histories completed
Methods

New Top 10 (plus a few!) records of the species summary pages
These records are from SAFRING's database and refer to birds ringed and recovered in southern Africa

Fast fact	Result	Species	Ring no.	Notes
Fastest migration flight	27 days	European Swallow	A72250	flew from Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, to Whitley Bay, Britain
Greatest elapsed time (ie oldest bird)	41y 4m 26d	Wandering Albatross	14003339	Ring replaced with 14025350
Furthest distance flown	15398 km	Ruff	64308081	Port Alfred to Magadan in Russia
Most reported individual	78 times	African Penguin	S21225	Released at Silverstroomstrand on 26/07/1994 (Apollo Sea spill); seen on Dassen Island 78x, last seen 06/01/2003
First birds ringed		Cape Griffons		August 1948
First bird ring recovery		White Stork	209	ringed in Hungary and recovered in Himeville, KwaZulu-Natal, in January 1909
Longest reporting interval	15.5 years	Acacia Pied Barbet	286286	found in an owl pellet on 28/04/1986 at De Hoop, but only reported to SAFRING on 15/11/2001
Most ringed bird	219177 ringed	European Swallow		between 1948 and 2003
Most recovered bird	2163 ring recoveries	African Penguin		this excludes resightings; 3.0% recovery rate; of 80429 ringed
Highest recovery rate (for >1000 birds ringed)	6.5%	Jackal Buzzard		72 recoveries of 1113 ringed
Highest recovery rate for passerines	2.8%	Redwinged Starling		49 recoveries of 1770 ringed (this excludes resightings)
Oldest passerine	17y 5m 17d	Stripecheecked Bulbul	BB36015	at Seldomseen, Zimbabwe
Most commonly reported cause of death	1715 birds Shot			Next most common is Killed by cat (697 records)

The most bizarre recovery record:
"A Barberspan coot (with a 'BP' prefix ring - one of the experimental batch of 10 000 rings with Durban Museum address that Peter Milstein used to show that 'Zoo Pretoria' address had a low reporting rate) that flew to Natal (as it was called in those high and far-off times) where it was eaten by a crocodile. The crocodile decided to change its abode and was run over and killed by a tractor in a sugarcane field. I can't remember the exact details - whether the weight of the tractor rear wheels split the crocs stomach and expressed the coot carcass and/or whether the farmer decided to skin the croc and examine the stomach contents, but whatever the case, the ringed coot was duly recovered and reported."
Thanks to Terry Oatley for sending me this story! [original record untraceable]

Some references with more recovery stories:
Oatley T. 1990. Tales of old rings. Birding in SA 42:98-100 (reprinted).
Oatley TB & Best C. 1994. Tales of old rings. Bird Numbers 2:13-14 (reprinted).
Oatley TB & Best C. 1994. Tales that ring true. African Wildlife 48(5):22-23 (reprinted).

Introduction

This is a project to computerise SAFRING's ringing data by species. As each species is completed, the data will be analysed and a summary will be posted (see list below. Several species with low ringing numbers have been done already. Anyone wanting to help with this project, ringers as well as non-ringers, can read more in the Methods below.

See an overview of annual ringing totals.

Excel program 177 kb, 29-July-2002(columns in different sequence to normal Ringers program)

   
Office Avian Demography Unit
Enquiries/More Information: SAFRING safring@adu.uct.ac.za
Last updated 5-Oct-2004