Edith Stephens Wetland Park –
CBC Conservation Committee visit
10 May 2008.

Dave Whitelaw speaking to the audience at Edith Stephens.

 

This is a working partnership with a number of NGO’s and the City of Cape Town.

 

10 May 2008 – On a cold, rainy morning forty seven people attended, including most of the CBC Conservation Committee.
This was the final day of the week long presentations and workshops held to try and establish a Cape Flats Bird Club at the Edith Stephens Wetland Park.
Stacy-Ann Michaels (Environmental Education Officer) devised a programme to enthuse and educate the potential club members.
Dave Whitelaw gave an overview of the importance and fun that members of the Club can have when learning about birds and their habitats.

The activities were about the fynbos biome food chain links, e.g.: Plants, insects, amphibians, raptors.
Each station was as practical as possible and the round-robin was a great success.

One of our stations braved the rain (Felicity Ellmore – fynbos plant station) the rest cosied into the hall and a fun, warm time was had by all.
She spoke about plants and birds – “so I used sunbirds as pollinators as an example as they have plants like Leonotus (wild dagga) and Tecomaria (Cape Honeysuckle) in the garden at Edith Stephens. We looked at the shape of the flowers etc. Then we walked around the garden and I showed them plants that grow easily and attract birds and insects – eg Leonotus, Tecomaria, Pelargoniums, Chrysanthemoides (bitoubos), Salvia etc.
They were all very keen to find ripe fruits of the Natal Plum/Num-num even though it had long thorns”.

A group picture with Doug Harebottle, Dave and Jeniffer van Niekerk – Committee Members. Frank Wygold and Felicity were outside with some aspiring bird watchers.

Photographs by Doug Harebottle.

Gavin Lawson.