SAFRING's mission: SAFRING is based at the University of Cape Town and provides bird ringing services in South Africa and other African countries. This entails providing ringing equipment to qualified ringers, and curating all ringing data. SAFRING communicates with ringers and interested parties through annually publishing one or two issues of a newsletter, Afring News, and by maintaining a list server. SAFRING holds national training courses, annually if there is sufficient demand. SAFRING liases with the provinces who have the responsibility of issuing permits. SAFRING has a strict code of ethics to ensure the safety of birds handled. SAFRING acknowledges the importance of bird ringing in that it has been described as the most important tool in ornithology in the 20th century.
The South African Bird Ringing Unit (SAFRING) administers bird ringing in southern Africa, supplying rings, ringing equipment and services to volunteer and professional ringers in South Africa and neighbouring countries. All ringing records are curated by SAFRING, which is an essential arm of the Animal Demography Unit. Contact is maintained by the SAFRING Project Coordinator with all ringers (banders in North American or Australian terminology).
Latest news |
| 2009-07-01 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Passing away of Jon van der Merwe | | Jon van der Merwe passed away peacefully this morning after an illness of 18 months. Jon and his wife Jenny were ringers of long standing, having ringed actively since 1994. In addition to mist-netting they were very involved in ringing and monitoring African Black Oystercatchers. SAFRING's sympathies go to his family, particularly his wife Jenny.
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| | 2009-07-01 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Unusual recovery | | Yennifer Hernandez, a temporary field assistant with Ingrid Wiesel’s Brown
Hyena Research Project in Lüderitz, has recently been busy with the
fun-filled task of lovingly taking apart and sorting a whole collection of
brown hyena poohs to extract prey items. On Saturday 20 June 2009, she came
across ring FH41384 in a scat that had been collected by Ingrid on 28
October 2008 at a brown hyena den near the Swakopmund Salt Works.
The ring belonged to a white-fronted plover, ringed as a chick on 21 March
2007 at Mile 4 (2234S, 1431E) by none other than Dirk Heinrich. I have asked
Ingrid whether the scat in question was still steaming-fresh when she
collected it, to find out whether we could narrow down the plover’s date and
cause of death. Unfortunately the scat had been dry and white when it was
collected, but Ingrid says that they do dry out quite fast. She has had
reports that the den area was active around the beginning of 2008, so it
could have originated from that time. In that case it is likely that the
plover died from something else and the hyena subsequently scavenged it.
Alternatively, it is possible that the hyena predated the plover when it was
still a chick and before it could fly.
Reported by Jessica Kemper to Namringers listserver | | |
| | 2009-06-22 | Dieter Oschadleus | | Ringing conference at Barberspan, 2010 | | Keep the date 12-15 March 2010 reserved in your diary for the next SAFRING conference, to be held at Barberspan Nature Reserve in North-West Province. Following the success of the 60th anniversary conference at Ezemvelo, ringers showed an interest in more conferences. More details to follow.
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