Saturday 29 January 2011

Another first for the Western Palearctic - YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON at Terceira


This juvenile YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON was photographed by Filipe Correira on Terceira, in the AZORES. It has been present since at least 28 July 2010 and was still being seen as recently as last Sunday 23 January 2011. Full marks to Tony Clarke for notifying me of this amazing record

Tuesday 18 January 2011

BRUCE'S GREEN PIGEON in EGYPT


This BRUCE'S GREEN PIGEON was photographed in Luxor, Egypt, by Steven R van der Veen recently - yet another mega to befall this bird-rich country in winter.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

AFRICAN MOURNING DOVES - the images - Kris De Rouk




Is this yet another overlooked species in the Western Palearctic?

AFRICAN MOURNING DOVES in extreme southern EGYPT - first record for the WP

On 29th December 2010 I and Dirk Colin were looking for birds in the Village of Abu Simbel (near the Tempel) in southern EGYPT. On one occasion I was attracted to a strange call somewhere in a tree. I shouted to Dirk to come and listen to this call. Suddenly the bird left the tree and we could see that it was in fact a small Collared Dove type perhaps African. We found also a second Dove.

From that moment on they were seen displaying and were regularly calling - with this krawrr call http://www.xeno-canto.org/XCspeciesprofiles.php?species_nr2=5736.00

When we got back home and checked the photographs, we realised that our birds were actually AFRICAN MOURNING DOVES Streptopelia decipiens, ""a first for the Western Palearctic."" !!

Kris De Rouck, Belgium