Hi Rupert

Another old friend passed away!!  Yes I had lots to do with it.  The rescue operation to free the chicks from their soda anklets had attracted lots of interest, with the British army sending chaps to help, Magadi schoolchildren available because of a teacher's strike, Bata donating wellington boots etc, and even the Governor coming down to help!  After some experimentation we found that if placed on a hard surface the anklets would break open with a single hammer tap, taking just seconds.  They were not stuck to the leg, just loose like a huge bangle.The kids easily caught the shackled chicks and brought them to about ten 'hammerers' who kept a rough tally of birds freed.  In a week of long hot days at about 400 chicks p.p.p.d.we reckoned we freed about 27,000 chicks, and by keeping the huge flocks of chicks away from the lagoons where they might gather anklets we reckoned we saved perhaps another hundred thousand.  The numbers seem huge, but Leslie and John Williams reckoned there were a half million chicks.  The adults had been eager to breed, but the extra heavy rains which provided a bonanza of their main food, spirolina, also flooded their traditional nesting site on Lake Natron, which is why they came to L. Magadi – right in front of the factory.

 Leslie obtained the rings in a hurry, and with the same volunteers rounding up chicks we ringed some 8,000.  Leslie was in his element -  I had never seen him so happy!! The most amazing record is of a lesser that ended up on a tiny lake in west Africa. Thousands of miles with no possibilities of feeding anywhere west of the Queen Elizabeth park in Uganda.

It gives me a good feeling to know that this latest find probably means that there are still hundreds of 'our' birds of that age, paddling in our lakes.  

Alan
 
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