With one week to go to the end of the year and 984 pentads (atlas squares) covered, a core of dedicated bird atlassers were pushing to reach 1,000 pentads atlassed for Kenya by the 31st. The 1,000th card was submitted at 11.59pm last night...! I was able to reach an unmapped pentad on Sunday with John Fanshawe, Jaap Gijsbertsen and Kees Barendse - the Sokoke pentad to the south-west of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest that includes a thin sliver of forest along it's northern boundary and which therefore meant we were able to add some forest species such as Little Yellow Flycatcher - but it also took us to the stunning views across from the very south-western corner of the forest looking west where the shambas have a few remnants of forest trees - enough to have an Ayre's Hawk Eagle and an unusual date for a Yellowbill. Mosque Swallows and Scaly Babblers were also good species to add. Heading south and west the steep slopes of the ridge have been utterly cleansed of any forest and all that remains is short scrub and open ground - 'we'll get Flappet Lark, probably down there' we predicted... and sure enough there it was together with Grassland Pipits, Cut-throat Finches and a lone Red-backed Shrike. A total of 66 species was acceptable for a single bash of c.3 hours in what is definitely mostly very degraded habitat....

The 1,000 pentad mark is a significant milestone to reach for the Kenya Bird Map project and a real tribute to the awesome amount of hours and effort put in by a relatively small group of birders - 278 people have contributed data to the atlas since it started and in 2018 exactly 100.

4,855 Full Protocol cards have been submitted in total (1,117 were submitted in 2018 - and there are probably more to come from atlassers who have not yet submitted cards that have been completed). A Full Protocol card is a full list of species for a pentad and are data that can be easily used for some excellent analyses to understand changes in distribution, population, seasonality etc. - such as the plot below that shows the reporting rate for Lesser Striped Swallow across the whole of Kenya by five-day periods (pentades - not to be confused with pentads which are the five minutes by five minutes atlas squares):

This suggests that the peak time for seeing Lesser Striped Swallows is soon - around February (pentade no.1 is 1-5th January) - but that there is a clear movement away from Kenya in around October... Similar analyses can be done for smaller groups of pentads - e.g. for a single ranch, conservancy or National Park - or even down to a single pentad -- so long as there are sufficient records for those pentads.

Such results are going to add substantial amounts to our understanding of species' occurrence and their current status - which has changed drastically since the first bird atlas was published in 1989.

The Kenya Bird Map project has been fortunate to receive funding from the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) and the Kenya government National Research Fund to be allow us to train up African ornithologists in the analysis of atlas data and we shall be recruiting scientists for the training that will be happening in April with input from scientists within the CCI and the University of Cape Town. With 1,000 pentads covered and atlassers already back out in the field (there have been Whatsapp messages to this effect already this morning!), the data being generated is without doubt going to reveal some very interesting results for conservation and science.

So a huge THANK YOU to all those 278 Citizen Scientists who have contributed to the atlas so far - Team Kenya Bird Map is doing an outstanding job and I know many birders have hugely enjoyed contributing. The atlas is expanding to the whole of Africa this year - with an official launch at the AEWA 7th Session of the Meeting of the Parties in Durban in December 2018 - so watch this space for further information on this and as the new website is launched. The BirdLasser app now operates across the world and data can be submitted from any corner of Africa already - do sign up and join us in this great project if you haven't already!

With best wishes for an excellent 2019...

Colin

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Colin Jackson
A Rocha Kenya / Kenya Bird Map

Cell: 
+254 (0)722 842366
      
http://www.arocha.org
http://www.assets-kenya.org
http://kenyabirdmap.adu.org.za