I was at Momella Lakes in Arusha NP last weekend. I was soon
overwhelmed trying to count the flamingos (I've counted thousands of
auks on cliff ledges from a bobbing boat before, but these flamingos,
they're so mobile, they're a nightmare!). So I decided to take a
panoramic series of photos of the whole lot as I moved around the
lake, thinking that physical features on the bank behind would be
adequate to help avoid double-counting when stitching the photos
together later. I've attached an example photo; of course all the
originals are much bigger in size and higher in quality.
Firstly, would you comment on the validity/accuracy of counting them
in this way. And secondly, since it's hard to find the time to
actually sit down and do the counting, I was wondering if there is
anyone out there who would be willing to help? i.e. I can send anyone
the whole series of photos if they have a good connection and enjoy
this sort of thing...
I've attached a couple of other photos for fun
Cheers
Trev
p.s. >99% of them were lessers, I guess this is normal
p.p.s. Couldn't find a single maccoa, maybe I don't know where to look...
Trev
ReplyDeleteit's the only way to count flimflams when they are in these numbers, all our aerial pics are registered like this.
send them to me at approx 300kb each.
print, pin through each bird, create a grid on the reverse and count the holes.
simple really....
on the larger lakes they spread out to feed when the wind dies down, only then can they be counted from the shore and only if there is raised ground to use.
in the late 90s we ran an IBA workshop from Kifufu, the day out was ANP. In the morning I separately asked the two groups to count the flamingos. First group counted c7,000, 2nd group c19,000. After lunch we did it slowly, c 14,000.
IT IS NOT EASY, IT TAKES TIME.
THE ONLY WAY TO COUNT THESE LARGE FLOCKS ACCURATELY ON THE LARGER LAKES IS BY AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Neil