The year 2023 ushered in the 75^th anniversary of the ‘Cape Bird Club’. The largest bird club in South Africa of which I have been a member for over fifty years following my relocation to Cape Town from Johannesburg as a then active member of the ‘Witwatersrand Bird Club’.

To mark the milestone anniversary, Mike Buckham the CBC chairman and his new committee, together with Cliff Dorse of the City of Cape Town, decided to run a ‘Big Birding Year’ for 2023 as an innovative idea to promote birdwatching and to determine an updated species list and population assessment of birds likely to be recorded within the Greater Cape Town area.

Suffice to say the ‘Big Birding Year’ concept was enthusiastically received by birders, providing not only competitive fun within the Cape Town Bird Club as a ‘challenge’, but also the motivation for members to visit new sites as part of the ‘Birdlasser’ citizen science project linked to the recording of field sightings in ‘real’ time.

As such the ‘Birding Big Year 2023’ initiative will provide an accurate indication as to the status and precise location of bird species as the basis for the environmental programme that Cape Town has in mind as a workable conservation initiative in the face of ongoing urban development and rural habitat loss.

Images of a few of the more iconic Cape Town species:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more info on birding in the City of Cape Town, contact Patrick Cardwell at Avian Leisure patrick@avianleisure.com