UCT rings its pesky sandwich thieves

The University of Cape Town campus is swarming with sandwich thieves.

Thousands of red-winged starlings fly through upper campus, swooping past students' heads on Jameson Plaza in search of a chip or a few crumbs.

Now researchers at UCT's FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology have brought their scientific skills to bear on some conundrums: how do the starlings fare when junk food replaces their natural diet of fruit and insects?

How do they survive at weekends and holidays?

And how are they adapting to Cape Town's increasingly hot and dry weather?

The ornithologists are about halfway to their target of ringing and taking blood samples from 200 starlings.

And now they have roped in all UCT students and staff to report sightings of ringed birds either on a Facebook page or via a WhatsApp group.

"All birds are ringed with three coloured plastic rings and one metal ring which contains a unique ID number," said the FitzPatrick Institute.

"Results will feed into various honours and masters projects. as well as forming the baseline for the long-term study of this particular starling population.

"It's also important for people to be aware of what the researchers are doing - if only to change a few minds and to show that these highly intelligent birds are more than just sandwich thieves," the institute said.