Weaver news

Breeding seasons of weavers

2013-11-15 (448)


Graphs showing the number of breeding records per month have been added to the PHOWN species pages. The number of breeding records were compiled from the literature. Graphs are available for 83 of the world's 117 living species. For some weavers, very little is known about their breeding habits.

The records are grouped into 6 regions: southern Africa, central Africa, western Africa, eastern Africa, southern Asia, and the Indian Ocean islands. This means that it is easy to see how breeding seasonality varies by region. The figure on the right, for instance, shows the peak breeding of the Red-collared Widow as December in southern Africa, March in West Africa and May in East Africa. These graphs will be improved in the future, using Nest Record Card data and scaling the information from different regions.

The graphs were prepared by Emma Lee, a semester exchange student from the University of Queensland, Australia, with a zoology major. During her semester at the University of Cape Town, she had some time to volunteer and produce these great graphs!

A summary of breeding information, with a summary of PHOWN records where available, appears on these web pages for every weaver species. See here and select the species you want to see, from the drop down box.