Bird distribution dynamics 10 - Pale-crowned Cisticola Cisticola cinnamomeus in South Africa

Abstract

Overall, the Pale-crowned Cisticola is extremely unlikely to have experienced a dramatic increase in range and reporting rate due to rapid colonisation of new areas in the two-decade period between SABAP1 and SABAP2. Instead, the observed expansion needs to be attributed to a dramatic growth in observer skill. Citizen scientists, in both SABAP1 and especially in SABAP2, have probably had a larger, more profound effect on our knowledge of the status and distribution of the Pale-crowned Cisticola in South Africa than any ornithologists have managed since its discovery in 1904.