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South Africa’s endemic birds

10,000 Birds

In 1996, several pipit specimens were collected for DNA analysis and it turned out that there was not one, but two new species to science in this sample! The Long-tailed Pipit was the more obvious one, this species turning up every winter in this arid region of South Africa, before mysteriously disappearing.

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Africa’s endangered species

10,000 Birds

More than 150 bird species are known to have become extinct over the past 500 years, and many more are estimated to have been driven to extinction before they became known to science. Image by Adam Riley Ludwig’s Bustard This attractive dry country bustard ranges across western South Africa, Namibia and just into southern Angola.

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Africa’s Barbets

10,000 Birds

White-chested Tinkerbird is one of Africa’s avian mysteries, known only from a single specimen collected in 1964 at Mayau in north-west Zambia, close to the borders of Angola and the DRC. Benson to collect birds. It is seldom that indigenous people are honored in this way.

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