birding-aus

Re: Help with Southern African Species

To: Gil Langfield <>
Subject: Re: Help with Southern African Species
From: (chris dahlberg)
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 15:59:51 +1000 (EST)
Hi Gil
what a fantastic place to go for a holiday, Denise and I were there less
than a year ago. I have the Newmans Green Edition and hopefully some answers
for you:
1. Black Kite, Milvus migrans migrans
   Yellowbilled Kite, M. aegyptius
2. Forest Buzzard, Buteo trizonatus
   Steppe Buzzard, B. buteo vulpinus
3. Cape Sparrow, Passer melanurus, the only reference I could find for
mossie is that it is an Africaans word for sparrow.
We plan to go back there in the not to distant future. I was very impressed
with the value of our dollar and the overall value for money a holiday in
South Africa can be. Not to mention the birds and mammals.
cheers 
Chris Dahlberg

I have just returned from a family holiday in Southern Africa (mostly South
>Africa) where I saw just over 300 species of birds.  It was good birding
>(and animalling) and I found the South Africans to be very friendly and
>helpful people.
>
>I used Sinclair's "Birds of Southern Africa", First (?) Edition, 1993,
>which was the only guide in Andrew Isles' bookshop at the time.  I resisted
>the temptation to buy the Newman's Green Edition while in SA in order to
>save weight.  I am now trying to enter my sightings into BirdBase for
>Windows data base and am having the usual troubles since Sinclair uses
>Sibley and Ahlquist/Monroe (1990) while BirdBase uses Clements'
>classification.  I would much appreciate some help on the following
>problems from either our South African members or others with SA knowledge.
>
>Black Kite/Yellow-billed Kite:  HANZAB Volume 2 suggests to me that the
>Yellow-billed Kite is M. migrans parasitus, a subspecies of the Black Kite.
> Is this the case?
>
>Forest/Steppe/Common Buzzard:  Sinclair has a Forest Buzzard, Buteo
>tachardus, and a Steppe Buzzard, B. buteo which must be the local
>subspecies of the Common Buzzard.  Is the Forest Buzzard a full species?
>
>Mossie/Cape Sparrow:  BirdBase calls Passer melanurus the Mossie and P.
>diffusus the Cape Sparrow.  Sinclair has P. melanurus as the Cape Sparrow
>and no P. diffusus.  What is the correct common name?
>
>Regards,
>
>Gil Langfield
>Melbourne, Australia
>
>
>


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU