Most weaver species are common and in no need of conservation. Their common status, however, makes them easy to study and they are easy targets for ringers. SESAW (Survival Estimates in Southern African Weavers) is a project to monitor how survival rates are changing in weavers. Currently over 3500 weavers have been ringed and 9.4% of these have been retrapped in the first 10 months of the project. Read more here. This project has some differences to general SAFRING data:
1) all retraps are recorded - not all retraps less than 1 year were recorded in SAFRING in the past
2) recording breeding females and males in full breeding plumage will allow these 2 groups to be analysed in more detail - this is not possible with SAFRING data.

In June Neil Thompson, ringing weavers and other birds in his Windhoek garden, caught 72 Southern Masked Weavers and Southern Red Bishops but as many 18 of these were recaptures. This changed the recapture rate for the whole project up from 9.1% to 9.4%. Neil uses mostly walk-in traps to catch the birds.