R.F.C.G. News

News update August 2008

Shelley has been photographed!

The Rare Finch Conservation Group has finally managed to find a picture of a live Shelley’s crimsonwing Cryptospiza shelleyi. After more than 3 years of searching and requests, this recent photo was found on the Gorilla Organisation web site www.gorillas.org.

This male bird was netted in February 2008 during a bird survey of Mount Tshiaberimu, an annex of the Virunga National Park in DR Congo. Mount Tshiaberimu is known to host a number of species endemic to the Albertine Rift and the Gorilla Organization has been steadily surveying these as an important extension of its ongoing work to protect a small, unique population of gorillas in conjunction with ICCN, the Congolese wildlife authority.

The Rare Finch Conservation Group www.rarefinch.co.za is an NGO and registered public benefit organization, founded in August 2005 for the protection of finches in the wild - via research, education and aviculture. Our current field project in Uganda focuses on the crimsonwing family of forest finches, with particular emphasis on Shelley’s crimsonwing. See 2007/ 8 Field project

Simon Espley
RFCG director

Photo credit: www.gorillas.org