Great White Pelicans

Pelican Counting Day

On the weekend of the 16th and 17th of October we will organise the first National Pelican Counting Day. It is our plan to count the total number of pelicans in southern Africa twice a year, the first one while they concentrate in the breeding localities (Sept-November), and the other when they disperse after the breeding season (April-June). Together with the biannual data retrieved by CWAC from the main South African waterbodies, we will be able to reach an accurate total pelican count for the region, and to monitor population changes and trends.

For this first year (2004) we will focus primarily in South Africa. Meyrick Bowker (University of KwaZulu-Natal) will coordinate the counts in the east of the country and Marta de Ponte (ADU) is in charge of the Western Cape. The base of the counts in South Africa will be the already establised Coordinated Waterbird Count (CWAC), coordinated by Marius Wheeler.

However, it is our aim to assess the numbers of pelicans in the whole southern Africa region, especially due to the nomadic nature of these birds. In Namibia we are honored by Sandra Dantu and Marc Boorman's collaboration. They have kindly agred in coordinating the effort of birders, ringers and contacting the conservation authorities. Other southern African countries (Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe) will be only covered at this first atempt if there is people available, and then probably we will make use of aerial surveys in collaboration with the Bateleurs, due to the in some cases inaccessibility of the sites and the low human population.

Our plan is to asignate a person (or more) to every site (vleis, dams, lakes, ponds, etc.) where pelicans have been seen before. Most of the CWAC sites are expected to be covered this way. However, there are a percentage of sites where pelicans are seen frequently that do not belong to the CWAC network. For these localities we need volunteers that would count pelicans on these dates. Alternatively, some areas will be covered by airplane, especially in the remote and innaccesible regions of northern KZN.

If you are interested in collaborating with us please write to the coordinator of your area (Meyrick Bowker for the eastern part of southern Africa, and Marta de Ponte for the western sites, Namibia and Botswana). This ambicious project will only be successful with the help of a high number of volunteers.

The data we would like you to collect is the number of pelicans seen (as accurate as possible), the site (coordinates), date and time, pelican activity at the moment of the observation (preening, sleeping, eating, flying, etc.) and the direction they were moving to and/or from. We would also welcome any observations like age (juvenil, subadult, adult) and of course any rings observed. Remember there are already a few pelicans individually identifable by a combination of colour ring and alpha-numeric character. We expect this information to be provide clues about the age of the bird and its movements within the southern African region.