Your subscriptions for 2020 are now due. Please bring them with you on the walk on Sunday. Ordinary members still only pay P170 pa for the whole family, which must be the bargain for the year.

We are planning a camp for either 22 and 23 February or 14 and 15 March, depending on the response. It will probably be near Lepepe, just beyond Sojwe Pan, which is heaving with birds after the recent rains. It sounds a wonderful campsite with beautiful trees for shade, water for cold showers and veld toilets (long drop). Cost is P80 per person. Let me know whether you are interested.

Two other BLB members have noticed that it is a new year and that, if you want to take part in BirdLasser, you have to re-join. We congratulate Ian White for winning last year’s Gaborone Challenge by a whisker. There are two changes compared to last year; Gaborone area has expanded to a hundred km radius and there is a Challenge encompassing the whole of Botswana. Come on guys, see if you can identify more birds than you did last year. Nice to see Rranonyani back in action.

We have been approached by a member of iNaturalist to consider joining that programme and submitting sightings. This would entail considering the whole spectrum of Nature from botanical specimens to arachnology to lepidopterology to mycology to herpetology to Zygoptera and Anisoptera. Think about it. There are a couple of avid contributors and it must be great fun. Gaborone is one of a handful of cities in Africa which has joined the City Challenge. Last year Cape Town won the challenge for seeing most diverse species in the world. (Eugenie Skelton was an enthusiastic contributor to that effort.) Please see https://www.inaturalist.org/projec…/biodiversity-of-botswana But if you can only monitor one taxa, rather let that be birds and use BirdLasser!

Appended is the list of birds seen on 5th January on the walk to Potsane Dam; the list was kindly compiled by Daf and Mike Goldsworthy.

Keep those eyes peeled and binoculars close at hand.

Best wishes