Last Week's Submissions

This last week saw 22 observers submitting 41 cards, 6 of which were for new pentads. This is against 24 observers submitting 76 cards, 8 of which were for new pentads.

This week's champion atlasser is Tim Wood with 5 cards, followed by Barry Porter and Richard Johnstone each submitting 4 cards. Dave Everard and Iain Guthrie covered 2 new pentads each.

[I think that the rest of us also deserve a mention for taking the time to submit atlas cards and helping to keep the atlassing effort going in KZN].

Who Has Been Busy

Hopefully I will be back into a weekly update routine again now that the holidays are over.

This last week saw 24 observers submit 76 cards, 8 of which were for new pentads.
Duncan McKenzie led the charge with 14 cards, 5 of which were for new pentads. Sharon Louw, Alan Manson & Johan Gous submitted the other three cards for new pentads.
Good to see a mix of stalwart observers week after week as well as a number of visitors who submitted cards.

Who Has Been Atlassing in KZN

Since it has been 2½ weeks since I last managed an update, I will not compare this set of stats with the last, just what has been covered.
41 of us have submitted 122 cards, 15 of which were for pentads that had not been covered before. Michael Lee submitted the most cards, closely followed by Trish Strachan. Alan Manson covered the most new area, with four new pentads.
Good to see that so many people have been active, even though we are now well into the middle of winter.

KZN Boundary Bash

Hi Everyone,

Under downloads(Boundary Bash Pentads)you will find a list of KZN Border pentads that have not been atlased yet. Iain Guthrie, kindly put this list together, he has just had a back op and is house bound for a few weeks, so here is a challenge to all those wonderful atlasers out there who would like to see KZN completely "ATLASED IN" We are going to call this the "Boundary Bash" Iain will keep tabs on how many of these border pentads are done, I think we should aim to have them done by the end of 2009?

There is a link to the species recorded in SABAP1 for the Quarter degree square that pentad is in. These pentads are grouped into borders with Eastern Cape, Lesotho, Free state, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Mozambique and the Indian Ocean!

Regards, "House bound" Iain

This Weeks Atlassers

This weeks sees a climb to 31 observers submitting 79 cards over the last six days. 22 cards were for new pentads.
This is up from 22 observers, 51 cards and 5 new pentads last week.
I suspect that there was a bit of a lag after the long weekend, ie some cards were only submitted after last Wednesday, when I last did the numbers.
It is very encouraging to see that there are new, and different names on the list, as well as the stalwarts.
Well done everybody.

This Weeks Atlassers

This last week saw a drop in submissions in all three categories, though I may have drawn the stats a day early, as some observers may have not gotten their long weekend returns in yet.
In any event we have one less observer than last week, 38 cards less and 8 new pentads fewer.
On the positive side, we appear to have some new names on our observer list. So a big welcome to them, and many happy hours atlassing.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am finding it more and more difficult getting to pentads with no cover, either distance or access wise. Put another way, the pentads with no cover are either further away, or ones that I am less inclined to visit, usually because of safety or poor roads.
On a happier note, I find that I have been enjoying my winter birding, what birds are around are definitely showing well, or is it simply a lack of vegetation?

Some Atlas Targets [Again!]

KZN does look healthy. Our provincial average is above 90%, with two areas now having closed out all Quarter Degree Squares. Sisonke [Southern KZN] has not very far to go, being above 95%. North, Zululand and Trogons [South Coast] are all in the 85-90% band, so some work to do there.

This target is really part of the Chamaeleon Challenge [see http://sabap2.adu.org.za/challenge_wc2009_splurb.php]. The thrust of this challenge is to change the colour of pentads on the coverage map [the number of cards returned for each pentad are represented by various colours]. Extra points for the challenge are scored if the colour changes from light to dark greem, i.e. if you return the seventh card for a pentad.
On the provincial level we are drawing away from the March-09 target of 13% [of the pentads with cards having more than seven cards]. We are now a touch under 16%. Northern KZN has the most to do, but is showing encouraging upward movement.