At this event you will receive an explanation and practice round of the bird monitoring protocol we use at our sites which will allow you to become a bird-monitor volunteer. Ceinwen Smith from Ingcungcu will provide the bird monitoring training and Cape Bird Club will provide basic birding techniques for less experienced birders. No previous experience needed to join.
This event will be hosted at Rondevlei, after which we will find a fynbos site that needs monitoring near you. At the moment the sites are clustered around Mowbray and Steenberg. Some of the sites are at schools where we would eventually like monitors to engage with learners and share the birding and bird-monitoring skills and passion with them.
About Training activities
During a training event, Communitree and friends help volunteers learn skills and acquire information they need to grow plants at home, to identify plants, know about the ecology, and to green in a responsible way. We hold different types of training events and workshops to try and cater to a wide audience.
Communitree organises home nursery workshops, in which we go over the process of setting up a home nursery, and we show how to plant seeds or cuttings and how to care for them. We hold these workshops ever first Saturday of the month. At the same time, we work with the team at the Habitat Restoration Unit at the City of Cape Town. This unit, located at Westlake Conservation Centre, has a wealth of knowledge on growing indigenous vegetation from seed or cutting, and we have different training opportunities here. Every Friday, our volunteers can join us for a "work and volunteer" session at the Westlake nursery, where we will help out at the nursery while learning about the plants and nursery management. Furthermore, special beginners training sessions are held every now and then in collaboration with the Habitat Restoration Unit, to teach about setting up a home nursery. Finally, Communitree collaborates with the Iingcungcu sunbird project and the Cape Bird Club to provide people with training on bird monitoring and identification. This is part of our monitoring programme.
