Click here to see the image galleries!

On 24 October 2009, South African birders and photographers photographed South Africa's amazing bird diversity to raise awareness about climate change! Oganised by: Birding Africa, PlusPlusMinus, Birdlife South Africa and 350.org.
Click here to see the list of 365 submitted species.

Meet the team...

A team of volunteers has worked day and night for the past week to bring you this project. The idea was conceived by Adam Welz, now sitting in New York running international publicity for 350.org. Deirdre Vrancken of Birding Africa drove the process in South Africa, marshalling web designers Iaan van Niekerk and Cindy of PlusPlusMinus. The project was also partnered with BirdLife South Africa, and promoted by director Mark Anderson and Nikki McCartney. Adam also roped in a Joel Avni, a fellow photo-journalist who coordinates a training project for ringers and is a keen bird photographer. As the project gathered more momentum, Deirdre also enrolled Campbell Fleming, a scholar who did a work shadow at Birding Africa, local birder Gordon Botha, and Sally Hofmeyr, a PhD student at the ADU. Birding Africa's Callan Cohen handled problem identifications and processing.

The wave of photographs that started rolling in on Saturday morning soon overwhelmed the Birding Africa office, the system set up to process the pictures, and the hands on the keyboards. They worked pretty much non-stop on the project, collapsing for a few hours sleep each night and ignoring all other responsibilities for the past four days. All were inspired by the enthusiastic photographers who set out to chronicle the lives of avifauna as diverse as feral pigeons and Baillon's Crake over the course of one day. They used cameras as diverse as cellphones and rigs that could be pawned for the down payment on a small palace.
Some were expert birders; some had never before aimed a lens at anything, others were professional photographers. But almost everyone who registered for the event set about the task with unbridled enthusiasm. The team has been slaving away ever since to process these images and put them up on these pages for you. There are still some loose ends, but we hope you appreciate the output from this people's project.


Reason for celebration: 350 different species processed!! Now just over 1000 photographs left to process!
From left to right: Joel Avni, Campbell Fleming, Deirdre Vrancken and Callan Cohen.


The team shares the news with 350-24-24 brainchild Adam Welz; he's at the 350.org headquarters in New York. Back to
work after that! Campbell Fleming dissects the database and finds new species. He adds these on the main gallery while Deirdre adds them to the Birdlife South Africa bird species list.

Gordon Botha and Deirdre Vrancken making sure to show at least one image per photographer.


Sally Hofmeyr, Joel Avni and Deirdre Vrancken on (late) night shifts, entering photographers' names and captions. They verify that each bird species appears only once in the main gallery. They send duplicates to the overflow gallery.

Photos above taken in the Birding Africa offices by Callan Cohen.


Joel photographs a Steppe Buzzard with Cape Town on the background on the day of the Challenge. Just one
image of a Steppe Buzzard will appear in the main gallery. Any others may appear in the overflow gallery.


Callan, Joel and the buzzard on the day of the Challenge, 24 October 2009. Later-on, they'll post photos of
photographers taken on the day in the photographers gallery. Any species above the 350th will show there too!