We welcome Christian Escher, a student of the University of Munich in Germany. He is visiting Cape Town for two weeks from 7 Oct. His supervisor, Dr Alain Jacot of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, is working on variation in begging calls of colonially and solitary breeding weaver species. The aim of Christian's visit is to obtain recordings of chicks close to fledging (day 13 and older), and to obtain recordings of nestlings of different ages. Another PhD student, Hendrik Reers, presented data from Kenya on weaver calls at the PAOC: read abstract here
Christian will help ring weaver chicks for the project on natal dispersal, a project to see how far weaver chicks disperse after fledging. Over 250 chicks have been ringed in the last 2 months.