Category: OSME Blogs

Tracking loggerhead turtles to their death in the Eastern Mediterranean

Adult female loggerhead turtle caught in a trammel net, Iskele, North Cyprus. Photographer Olkan Ergüler The Marine Turtle Conservation Project in North Cyprus is a collaboration between the Society for Protection of Turtles, The North Cyprus Environmental Protection Department...

An Azerbaijan interlude with young naturalists

During 25-30 October 2015  the youth committee of BirdLife Sweden visited Azerbaijan to study bird migration at Besh Barmag but also to meet with local young naturalists and initiate further co-operation. The trip was a great success  ...

Birding in Oman

A guest blog by Bart de Schutter In November/December 2012 a friend of mine visited Oman on a birding and photographing trip. Looked like a nice country for birding to me, but I was not really inspired. Not yet....

Turkish Breeding Bird Atlas: Call for Volunteers

Turkey is one of the most fascinating countries in the Western Palearctic for birdwatchers. The location of the country at the crossroads of continents resulted in diverse habitat and bird species. Specialties and rarities include Yelkouan Shearwater,...

OSME Region List version 3.2 – a precis of changes

There have been numerous taxonomic and related developments since v3.1. Several former Puffinus taxa have been transferred to a restored genus, Ardenna, making most groups monophyletic (Christides & Boles 2008). Purple Swamphen has been split (IOC5.3) pretty well as ORL3.1...

Darwin project puts Iraq’s wildlife on the map

A three-year project in Iraq has significantly contributed to knowledge of the country’s flora and fauna – including five previously unknown plant species – as well as improving the prospects for future conservation efforts in the country....

An overview of OSME’s key achievements in 2015

Conservation is a huge challenge around the globe. Habitats continue to disappear and the number of species at risk of extinction continues to increase. In 2015, 40 more bird species were classified as having a higher risk...

British Birds – a new monthly newsletter

Many OSME members will be subscribers to British Birds or may have taken up recent trial offers. British Birds also produce a free e-newsletter every month which is available to non-subscribers. This newsletter offers a nice flavour of what has been published recently...

Is the Slender-billed Curlew extinct?

In the latest (November) issue of British Birds, Guy Kirwan, Richard Porter & Derek Scott examine all the historical claims and records of Slender-billed Curlew in the Middle East. It is suggested that many of the published records, especially...

The 2015 OSME Region List and its underpinning taxonomy

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...

Joint winter meeting 21st November 2015

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,...