PHOWN Newsletter 4, 6 July 2012
This newsletter reports on progress since the previous newsletter in Feb 2012.New records
At the end of July PHOWN will celebrate its second anniversary! The number of records submitted is steadily increasing. From the start of 2012, on average well over 100 records have been submitted per month. March was a sparse month as little breeding occurs in southern Africa. Over the past few months PHOWN saw the addition of many new species, countries and participants. News items describing new species additions to PHOWN may be read here:
Loanga Weaver
Rufous-tailed Weaver
Bocage's Weaver
Golden-backed Weaver
Red-collared Widow
Black-billed Weaver
Three new countries have PHOWN records:
Sierra Leone
Nigeria
Sudan
Weaver Wednesday
The Animal Demography Unit recently started a daily series to describe species biodiversity. Every Wednesday will see an illustrated news item about a different weaver species, focusing on its distribution and breeding. This will appear on the weavers home page, so be sure to bookmark this page and check every Wednesday. If you missed the previous Weaver Wednesday items, read them here:
[1]: Red-headed Weaver
[2]: White-browed Sparrow-Weaver
[3]: Yellow-crowned Bishop
In between Wednesdays there are other interesting news items to read! On the ADU home page you can read a story daily in this series, as follows: Weaver Wednesday, Threat Thursday (a threatened species), Stats Saturday, Frog Friday, Snake Sunday, Mad Mammal Monday, and Tree Tuesday.
Breeding seasons
The top species are Southern Masked Weaver and Cape Weaver, and there are enough records to compare some basic breeding attributes for these two species. Breeding ends later in Southern Masked Weavers, and many individuals are still breeding, while the Cape Weavers have finished breeding for this summer. This should be analysed for winter and summer rainfall regions separately, but in both regions Cape Weavers finish breeding much earlier than the Southern Masked Weavers.
Thanks for your participation! Continue to send in records.
Weavers webpage
Email: weavers4africa [at] gmail.com