Birdwatching in a southern African context: explaining highlights on bird lists

ABSTRACT Although amateur birding makes important contributions towards conservation and the tourism industry, the precise motivations driving birders have not been extensively investigated. The aims of this study were to analyse birders’ highlights for birding trips within southern Africa and to establish whether local and foreign birders preferred to see rare or morphologically unusual birds, as opposed to common or morphologically indistinct birds. Morphological traits included: average body size, colour and unusual features; rarity-related traits included: maximum abundance, and range. A total of 673 terrestrial birds were included, and morphological and rarity-related traits were recorded for each species. Birding trip reports for long (two to four weeks) trips across southern Africa that included full sightings lists and highlights were used to indicate which species qualified as highlights (morphologically unusual, rare or both). Both among local and foreign birders, large-bodied birds were the main highlights, with the other characteristics not retrieved as significant. This contradicts the expectation that local birders would be more interested in rarity; however, this result could be explained by the fact that only long birding trips were considered, whereas rarity may more often be sought by specialized local birders on shorter, targeted trips.