‘Mangrove White-eye’ Zosterops sp. indet. Either Mangroves, Jizan Province, Saudi Arabia, 2 June 2016 © Jem Babbington. Showing bright general colouration.

Update on the ‘Mangrove White-eye’ in Saudi Arabia

Guest blog by Jem Babbington The Abyssinian White-eye Zosterops abyssinicus occurs in the highlands of southwestern Arabia and eastern Africa in well-wooded areas above 1,000 m above sea level. Interestingly the discovery of mangrove dwelling White-eyes by...

Bird trapping in Cyprus – an update

Guest blog by Guy Shorrock  In April 2020, BirdLife Cyprus published the autumn 2019 bird trapping survey. This suggests that an estimated 440,000 birds may have been killed within the survey area over the autumn. Whilst still...

Namaqua Dove Oena capensis

Expansion of Namaqua Dove in the OSME Region

Guest blog by Łukasz Ławicki Expansion and range extension of Namaqua Dove Oena capensis in the OSME Region has been going on for several decades. But in the last decade, this process significantly increased in pace. In...

Socotra Golden-winged Grosbeak Rhynchostruthus socotranus

Checklist of the Birds of the Socotra Archipelago

Richard Porter & Ahmed Saeed Suleiman Ahmed Saeed Suleiman and I have updated the Socotra Bird Checklist following new discoveries this year. Also the resident white-eye has now been assigned endemic species status – Socotra White-eye –...

A message from Tomas Axén Haraldsson

Youth development and Bird Camps update

Birds go on – birdwatchers on hold A message from Tomas Axén Haraldsson The current situation with the spread of the corona virus, and not least the consequences of all the emergency measures, has caused countries and...

Latest issue of Sandgrouse: free to download

Given the current extraordinary circumstances which have seen millions of people around the world confined to their homes, OSME has decided to make a pdf version of the Spring 2020 issue of Sandgrouse free for anyone to...

Birds of Lebanon, a Photographic Guide to 404 Species

By Ghassan Ramadan-Jaradi and Fouad Itani ISBN 9 789953 051062 In English Association for Bird Conservation in Lebanon Published in Lebanon  Available in bookshops in Lebanon and from: www.BuyLebanese.com/browse.asp?pr=1055 Price $34 plus postage (eg. Plus $24.75 to...

OSME Summer meeting and AGM postponed

Given the current global coronavirus crisis, OSME have taken the decision to postpone this year’s Summer Meeting and AGM that was due to be held on the 27th June. We will wait to see what the situation...

The OSME Region List of bird taxa v5.2 is now available

Version 5.2 (available here) includes several species not previously recorded in the OSME region, such as African Crake Crex egregia (Eilat, Israel January 2020); its genus may change to Cecropis (Garcia-Ramirez et al 2020). More important, v5.2...

Adult Eastern Imperial Eagle Aquila heliaca. © Cansu Özcan.

Studying Imperial Eagles in Turkey

A guest blog by Cansu Özcan I am biologist Cansu Özcan from Turkey. I am a bird watcher since 2012 and I have been studying the Eastern Imperial Eagle Aquila heliaca in Turkey since 2015.  I have...

OSME Chairman opening Summer Meeting

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN: OSME in 2019

The year 2019 was another successful one for OSME. During the last 12 months we have seen a number of long-running key projects reach their completion and the launch of several new initiatives. All of these were...

Birds of Cyprus

First, a declaration of interest. I know both the authors and over the years have met or corresponded with the artists. I’ve been to Cyprus many times, my first visit being in 1966 when I was in...