OSME has received the welcome news that the Government of Iraq has recently designated the Central Marshes and the Hammar Marsh in the southern part of the country as Wetlands of International Importance (‘Ramsar Sites’) under the...
The taxonomy in del Hoyo, J and NJ Collar. 2014. HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World Volume 1: Non-passerines. (Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. 903 pages, hundreds of colour plates) employs the Tobias et al 2010 system...
This November we are teaming up with the British Ornithologists’ Club and the Natural History Museum for a joint winter meeting focussing on “Bird monitoring within the OSME region”. It will be held at the Flett Theatre,...
OSME has received news regarding the State of Kuwait becoming the 169th Contracting Party of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (on 5 September, 2015). On the occasion of accession to the Ramsar Convention, and in fulfilment of a...
As readers of this blog will know there has been much concern over the scientific claims made in a paper published in the journal Zoology in the Middle East. The manuscript and follow up publications can be...
On the 4th July, as part of the OSME Summer Meeting, we also held our Annual General Meeting. OSME is a UK registered charity governed by a constitution (see here) that stipulates we hold an AGM every...
OSME held its annual Summer Meeting on 4 July at the BTO Headquarters in Thetford. The theme of the day was illegal bird killing in the OSME region. Five excellent speakers gave a range of talks, and...
The OSME region has its fair share of thinly-inhabited areas where knowledge of breeding distribution and how birds use such areas is poor to non-existent, primarily because of low observer density and lack of regular observation and...
OSME held its annual Summer Meeting on 4 July at the BTO Headquarters in Thetford. The theme of the day was illegal bird killing in the OSME region. Five excellent speakers gave a range of talks covering...
Simon Aspinall was a great friend of the Middle East – and OSME, making an important contribution to the ornithology and conservation of the region, especially in the United Arab Emirates. When in the UK he lived...
Like a number of areas in Cyprus, particularly in the south and southeast, Dhekelia or the Eastern Sovereign Base Area (ESBA) has a very serious problem with illegal bird trapping. In their autumn 2014 report on trapping activity, BirdLife...
It is now less than three weeks until the annual OSME Summer Meeting, which this year is focused on illegal bird killing in the OSME region. The meeting, which incorporates the OSME 37th AGM, will be held at...
BirdLife International has just released the European Red List for birds having collated the latest data from right across Europe and reassessed the regional status of all regularly occurring native species. This publication has implications for the GLOBAL Red List status...
It is not often you hear buntings compared to pigeons, but last week an excellent, yet worrying, scientific paper was published that shows massive declines in the once common and relatively widespread Yellow-breasted Bunting. The scale and...