By Ronnie Chirimuta
Six Birdlife Zimbabwe (BLZ) Youth Club members and two senior BLZ members visited Lake Chivero on Saturday, 8th September. Initially the outing was planned as a bird-watching exercise, in the game park on the south side of the lake. But, remembering their commitment to conserving the environment and their role as custodians of this rich and wonderful environment, the Youth Club members quickly decided to incorporate a clean-up in the day’s programme.
Lake Chivero is a wetland recognised internationally by the Ramsar Convention. It is also designated as an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) because of the large numbers of different water birds that congregate there. These water birds consist of both residents and migratory birds.
Unfortunately, the Lake is currently choking with plastic and abandoned gill nets and other rubbish which is degrading the quality of Harare’s water supply. These have a detrimental impact on the environment, human health and the biodiversity around the lake and beyond. Crabs, fish, frogs and birds are dying as a result of being trapped by the abandoned nets. The latter are also notorious for blocking some of the inlets that feed water into the Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant nearby.
Due to this going pollution, the African Darter is now extinct at Lake Chivero whilst the numbers of White-breasted Cormorants have gone down significantly. Yet our birdlife, like our wildlife, is a precious national natural resource that we simply cannot afford to lose!
Within a couple of hours of the group’s arrival at Preparation Creek, six large refuse bags
were filled with an assortment of rubbish. It might be ‘a drop in the ocean’, but six bags of rubbish less around Lake Chivero is a significant step towards cleaning up our environment and improving the quality of our lives.
After that, the youths and otherwise young at heart were more than ready to do their birding!
A total of 76 bird species were recorded during that day. This included two Wahlberg’s Eagles, Greater and Lesser Striped Swallows, many Helmeted Guineafowl (Hanga in Shona), Mocking Cliff-chats, Freckled Nightjars, five different species of Sunbirds, including a rare Purple-banded Sunbird, Egyptian Geese, beautiful African Jacanas, Glossy Ibis, White-breasted Cormorants and lots of majestic African Fish-eagles (including a chick in a nest).
Ostriches are also present in the game park, but this is an introduced species, so it is not counted as part of the (otherwise wild) birdlife!
As well as the birds, the visitors also enjoyed the sight of Rhino, Zebra, numerous Impala, Waterbuck, Blue Wildebeest, Giraffe, Warthogs, Tsessebe and, of course, many Baboons and Vervet Monkeys.
In October, the water in the Lake will be at its lowest level. During this period, Kuimba Shiri Bird Sanctuary on the north bank, will be conducting its annual clean-up to remove rubbish from the Lake. These popular clean-up campaigns have been held for the last four years but rubbish seems to keep on accumulating. Anyone keen to join in this year’s edition, while learning to identify some of the beautiful birds that live all over the lake, keep your calendars free as this is going to happen at the end of October!
Also, on the 13th of October, the BLZ Youths will be having a Fundraising Trail Run at Mukuvusi Woodlands. The funds generated from the run will be used to:
- Get more youths involved in nature conservation.
- Conduct water bird counts in January and July.
- Promote environmental awareness in schools.
- Conduct birding trips all over the country, as many parts of Zimbabwe do not have a record of the bird species present there.
For more information contact the BLZ Youth Chairperson, Ronnie Chirimuta, on 0775 617 213 or chirimutaronald@gmail.com