BIRDERS are invited to grow their knowledge on the abundant birdlife and ever-charming environment around them at the ‘Be the Better Birder’ course taking place at the Umbogovango Nature Reserve Conference Centre on Saturday, 13 April.
A great percentage of funds raised feed to BirdLife Port Natal.
This one-day course was originally developed for a specialist guide upskilling programme and has been modified to appeal to a wide audience including teenage birders, tour guides wanting to add a different layer to their guiding, backyard birders, serious twitchers and basically anybody interested in the natural world. Professors Ticky and Nicolette Forbes are both professional biologists who have lectured at UKZN, worked and travelled their passion learning about the natural world.
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Three interactive lectures will be given in the morning with discussion and questions encouraged. These sessions will deal with birds in the world around us and will cover topics including, plant and animal common names and why they change, understanding the different families and groups of birds and other interesting topics such as why birds sing.
The lecturers will assist attendees to set up their phones so they can log the birds they see either in their gardens, on holiday trips or even through a Big Year (a personal challenge or an informal competition among birders who attempt to identify as many species as possible by sight or sound, within a single calendar year and within a specific area).
Participants should bring a notebook and pen or pencil and binoculars for the walk. Individual assistance will be provided. A certificate of attendance will be presented as a record or memento of the course. Tea, coffee and refreshments will be available on arrival and mid-morning.
Registration is at 8.30am, with the workshop running from 9am to 3pm. Entrance is R200 for BirdLife members, R250 for visitors and R150 for juniors (under 18). To book, contact Francine at courses@ecoinfoafrica.com or 082-374-0217.
For further information and to register for the course, email courses@ecoinfoafrica.com.
More on BirdLife Port Natal
In 1949, with members spread between both Pietermaritzburg and Durban, the Natal Bird Club was established. In the early 1990s, with the establishment of BirdLife South Africa, many of the country’s bird clubs chose to change their names as well so that ‘BirdLife’ would be instantly recognisable.
The Natal Bird Club then decided to split into six separate bird clubs, so that the province of KwaZulu-Natal’s birders would be well catered for. These are Birdlife Port Natal which covers the eThekwini area, BirdLife Midlands centered around Pietermaritzburg, BirdLife Sisonke in the Highflats and Drakensberg, BirdLife Trogons on the South Coast, BirdLife Zululand on the North Coast and BirdLife Northern Natal around Ladysmith and Newcastle.
BirdLife Port Natal (BLPN) is therefore one of the oldest bird clubs in Africa which celebrated its Diamond Anniversary in 2009.
It is also one of the larger clubs affiliated to BirdLife South Africa, which in turn is the national partner of BirdLife International, the largest conservation organisation in the world. Thus, Birdlife Port Natal plays an important role in conservation in particular, and other aspects of birding in KZN and Southern Africa.
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