Thick-billed Weaver, Lake Panic, Kruger National Park, South Africa by Jackie During

PHOWN (PHOtos of Weaver Nests; rhymes with "own") is a new ADU Virtual Museum project, where weaver nests or colonies may be photographed and submitted. To take part in this project, you need to register as a virtual museum participant. Then find weaver nests and take photos and count the nests. It is currently the top item of Latest News on several ADU websites (eg http://www.adu.org.za).

You can view submissions already made (without being registered) at http://vmus.adu.org.za and clicking on "Photos of Weaver Nests" --- There are different search
possibilities - explore these yourself! There are already 23 records of a variety of southern African weavers in PHOWN.

To take part and submit your own photos, you need to register. Read more details here: http://weavers.adu.org.za/phown.php.

Any weaver species (Ploceidae family) may be photographed.

To register, go to http://vmus.adu.org.za , click on "Registration" down the left hand side menu, and fill in your contact details (if you have an ADU number, use this and your email to obtain your password). Your password is emailed to you. You use your email address and password to "LOGIN" (the bottom item on the same left hand side menu). Once you have done the LOGIN, the left hand side menu gets longer, and you can do "Data upload".

PHOWN (PHotos Of Weaver Nests) is a monitoring project aimed at determining the distribution of colonies or nests of all weaver species globally. Counting weaver nests and taking photos allows tracking of changes in weaver breeding effort. Many weavers are common and this project provides an easy way of monitoring them, while some weaver species are threatened and this project would help their conservation.
The software for the ADU Virtual Museum projects were written by Rene Navarro and the current software allows users to submit photos directly to the web, rather than emailing photos as was the case with the first project (SARCA, Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment). PHOWN is the fourth Virtual Museum project and is being launched in time for the 2010 breeding season. In the Western Cape Southern Masked and Cape Weavers have started to build nests.

So take your camera while birding!

Dieter

--
Dr H. Dieter Oschadleus
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Bird-ringing Coordinator, SAFRING
Animal Demography Unit, Dept of Zoology tel: (021) 650-2421
University of Cape Town fax: (021) 650-3434
Rondebosch 7701 RSA After-hours: 083-285-6889
SAFRING: http://safring.adu.org.za
Weavers: http://weavers.adu.org.za

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