A Cheklist of birds of Rwanda - 2018

The list presented here is from Birds in Rwanda (Vande weghe & Vande weghe 2011)...

The book compiled all observations made by the authors from 1969 to 2010 and references up to 2018 with an exhaustive bibliography compilation presented at the end.

From 2011 and on, few publications came up about Rwanda but a number of biodiversity reports, trip reports, unpublished observations communicated by Jean Pierre Vande weghe, Claver Ntoyinkima, Narcisse Ndayambaje, James Hogg, Jean-Paul Lebel, Deo Ndayisingize, Laure Rurangwa, and many others, as well as many observations reported through the e-bird platform have been taken into account.

The list has been in constant evolution and four new species were added. Moreover, environmental transformation of native habitats to extensive agriculture and the introduction of various exotic plants and trees, locally and regionally, are causing a number of distributional changes. As such we will likely see further addition of new species in Rwanda, displaced from neighbouring countries and also the disappearance of others, including recent immigrant, undadapted for more than a generation or two.

It’s important to note that the distribution maps and the records presented in Birds in Rwanda represent decades of observations and records in habitats that are now left to the minimal expression of what they were. Many of these records are historical and the shrinking distributions of birds in the country has been constant but remains to be fully measured.

A new version of the list is expected end of 2022.