Joe Grosel, chairman of BirdlifeSA in Limpopo province, conducted a four-day specialist birding course with the tracker students currently based at Londolozi Game Reserve.
For each group, Joe gets the students to correctly identify as many bird species as possible in a 24-hour period. The birding 24-hour day is conducted after an intensive few days of birding instruction by Joe. This is in additional to the routine training done in-house by Renias Mhlongo and Karel Benadie.
This year’s group broke the previous record by identifying 125 different species. This is exceptionally good work, particularly since the trackers have only been birding for nine months, not to mention that all the migrant species have also left! Joe will be running two courses at both Samara Private Game Reserve and Londolozi Game Reserve.
Story by Alex van den Heever
SA College for Tourism Tracker Academy Manager
Visit the Tracker Academy website for more