Birds are valuable indicators on the state of an environment and monitoring bird populations is useful for agriculture, fisheries, and conservation authorities.

Bird ringing can highlight issues of pollution, deforestation, power-line hazards, effects of long-line fishing, outbreaks of pest populations such as rodents or locusts, potential of disease epidemics and importantly the effects of climate change.

Every bird captured and identified by a bird ringer is marked with a uniquely numbered metal leg-ring or flipper-ring for penguins.

Almost two million birds have been ringed in southern Africa since the inception of the ringing project in 1948.

From the two million about 17 000 rings have been recovered, which is less than a one per cent return on the investment, with some species having a much higher return possibility than others.

Coloured leg-rings and wing-tags are used for specific projects designed for further study of a species often because of the need to devise species-specific conservation strategies.

Although there are only around 200 bird ringers in southern Africa, there are thousands of bird watchers.

Leg-rings or wing-tags engraved with numbers and letters that are large enough to be read with binoculars from a distance have the potential to better involve bird watchers in conservation projects.

The engraved markers will potentially increase the number of reports on the whereabouts of individual birds, which will help biologists to develop to mitigate threats and risks to that species.

'Take a Closer Look' is a poster jointly sponsored by the Namibia Bird Club and the Namibian Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS).

The poster is aimed at encouraging people to take a closer look for leg-rings or wing-tags.

The poster makes available the addresses where reports on sightings can be sent.

The poster also specifies the information required from the bird watcher.

Someone who cannot exactly identify a species can still report on the bird as the number on the ring or tag provides the authorities with the species information.

The Southern African authority and databank for bird ringing is the South African Bird Ringing Unit, SAFRING, based at Cape Town University.

SAFRING is the best address to report sightings to but many people may prefer to simply report to the local country authority and leave the authority to report to SAFRING.

Because birds do not recognise political boundaries and often move great distances, the poster has the ringing authority contacts for South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Copies of the poster have been requested by each listed country.

In Namibia it is intended that the poster will be used in relevant Government offices and tourist spaces.

For copies of the poster, please contact the NEWS office or NARREC in Windhoek

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