Saturday Stats: 4-10 August 

With Les away in the Knersvlakte this will be somewhat of an abridged summary of what has happened in the last week. SABAP2 is currently on 62.66% coverage. A total of 138 checklists were received from 128 pentads totalling 7241 records. No doubt the snow and cold conditions over most parts of the country contributed to a less active week for atlasers but these 'cold' lists will be extremely valuable for the atlas. The map on the left shows the coverage of SABAP2012 which passed the 21% milestone on Friday.    

The SpringMAP2012 challenge was launched on Wednesday 8 August and will run until the end of November. This will help map the distributions of returning intra-African and Palearctic migrants and will be the only time that we can do this for 2012. So far, 25 observers have submitted 41 cards for SpringMap. All atlasers are encouraged to do repeat surveys of their home pentads so we can track the arrival times of our returning migrant species. The map for the SpringMAP challenge can be seen here  

In keeping with our "species days" this past week has had a full complement of features - last Sunday, the snake of the day was the Swazi Rock Snake, Mad Mammal Monday featured the African Manatee. The tree for Tree Tuesday was the Marula Tree, and Weaver Wednesday focused on the Thick-billed Weaver. On Threat Thursday, the African Black Oystercatcher was featured as the focal species and Frog Friday highlighted the Argus Reed Frog.

Thank you for all your amazing contributions.

Doug Harebottle
2012-08-11

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