Lanioturdus 42(1) / 2009

Leseprobe

Editorial
I must start this, the second electronic issue of this journal, with an apology. The article “Mr Ellesmere did not return….” which was published in the previous issue was erroneously attributed to Tim Osborne whereas it was, in fact, written by Gisela Friede. My sincere apologies for this blunder.
On 22 November 2008 a well attended conference was held in Swakopmund to discuss the way forward for Namibia to join BirdLife International. The attendance register read something like the “Who’s Who” of birding in Namibia. In brief, it was resolved that Namibia would go ahead with the process of joining BirdLife and an umbrella body, Birds Namibia, would be created under which the various birdclubs, working groups etc. would fall. A draft constitution was thrashed out during the afternoon session of the conference while a number of interesting papers were presented at the morning session. I hope to publish a sy-nopsis of the proceedings in a future issue of Lanioturdus.
This journal was at one time published four times a year but in recent times it has appeared far less frequently due to the lack of contributions. I would like to get it back to its “glory days” of several editions per year but that will depend on your contributions. A friend of mine pointed out that in the “old days” (when most men could not type) people were prepared to sit down in front of the manual typewriter with a few litres of correcting fluid handy and knock out articles whereas today, when most of us can type, (albeit with two fingers in some cases) and most of us have access to computers people just don’t seem to be interested in writing articles anymore. At the risk of flogging a dead horse I must again appeal for your contributions for this journal. Many thanks to those few who have sent in contributions.
As the electronic publication of Lanioturdus is something new to all of us I would like your feedback. Any suggestions regarding the format are more than welcome. If you have problems downloading it or if the file is too big for your farm line let me know and I will see what can be done to rectify the problems. I can, however, not rectify problems if I don’t know about them.