Most PHOWN records are single records of a weaver colony and these are very valuable in seeing the breeding distribution of weavers. We would like to see more new records. We would also like to see many repeat counts of colonies. This can provide information on seasonal and annual changes in colony sizes of weavers. Choose a weaver colony near to your home or work that you can monitor on a regular basis.

How often should you record repeat counts of a colony? This is entirely up to you. You can submit repeats on a daily, weekly, monthly or random basis. If you submit repeats regularly but skip some becuase you are on holiday, for instance, that does not matter - simply continue when you can. You can also send repeats once a year, eg if you go on holiday to the same place every year and there are weaver colonies.

You can save a locality in your gazetteer to make it easier and quicker to upload future repeats - see here.

Repeat counts can be viewed very easily - every PHOWN record shows the repeats (if any) at the bottom of the web page. A table lists the counts per date and shows the thumbnails for each record. For example, a Cape Weaver colony in Rondevlei Nature Reserve, Cape Town, has been monitored for a year - see here. Plotting the counts of this colony provides the graph above.