Dear Friends

This mail came from Dr. Tony Sinclair who builds the Serengeti Ecosystem Biodiversity Project, if anyone is interested to help, please contact Tony directly through the e-mail below

happy birding

Itai
 
... I see various reports and sightings of Serengeti birds on the TZ
birds website. These are all very valuable for our long term
monitoring work in Serengeti. In the long run we send all of the work
to Neil anyway, but we are working at a finer scale than the bird 
atlas.

I was wondering whether you, collectively, would be willing to help
us by sending anything you see interesting to me directly (of course 
send it to KENYABIRDSNET as well). What we need is just two bits of 
information -

1. the UTM, or failing that some way we can locate the observation
(such as a verbal description - e.g. 10 km NW of Mara Sarova). The 
grid cell location is too coarse for our needs.

2. The habitat - all of you are remarkably good naturalists so this
probably will not be difficult. On the plains we distinguish, short,
intermediate, and long grass areas, kopjes, drainage lines, swamps,
and the lakes. In the woodlands we distinguish the various types of
Acacia woodlands (but I don't expect that from you - unless you can),
Terminalia, riverine forest, rivers elsewhere, drainage lines, 
korongos,  hills - anyway you get the picture, whatever you see fit.

Kris Metzger is my data analyst here and she is putting all this
together eventually. We also work with Colin Beale at the Macaulay
Institute in Scotland.

The Greater Serengeti Ecosystem is that area where the wildebeest go.
So this goes to the lake edge in the west, includes the Mara park in
Kenya, loliondo area, the Salai plains to the edge of the rift, to
base of Ngorongoro but not the highlands, and in the south to the
edge of the plains at Kakesio and Makao and includes all of the Maswa
game Reserve.

What birds? Anything you find interesting. My team can only sample at
infrequent intervals so we miss most of the unusual, uncommon and
rare birds. Thus the more eyes we have the better. We record all
species of course but I am not asking for that.

With best wishes

Tony Sinclair

A.R.E. Sinclair
Centre for Biodiversity Research
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, Canada
Ph: 604-822-4239
Fax: 604-822-0653
email: sinclair@zoology.ubc.ca