Changes to the British List (6 Aug 2018)
Colour-ringed Egyptian Goose, ringed in the Netherlands, at Cowpen Bewley, Cleveland, April 2018
© Ian Forrest
The British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) has placed the following in Category C5:
Egyptian Goose Alopochen aegyptiaca
Adult, Cowpen Bewley, Cleveland, 8 April 2018 (photographed; ringing recovery (colour-ring field sighting)).
This species is already placed in Category C1 of the British List (and also in Category E*), due to the presence of a naturalised population in England (see BTO distribution map).
However, the increase of a much larger naturalized population on the near Continent in the Netherlands has resulted in the movement of these birds to other countries. The presence of this adult with colour Darvik leg-rings placed on it in Amsterdam on 21 July 2017 confirmed that Continental naturalised birds can reach Britain. This individual was with two other non-ringed birds, which were likely of the same origin.
As an immigrant species ‘from established naturalized populations abroad’ this made the record a ‘Vagrant naturalized species’ (Ibis 160: 190-240), and so eligible for Category C5.
Category C5 was added to the British List in 2005 (Ibis 147: 803-820) in recognition of increasing naturalised populations of several species on the near Continent. This is the first record of any species to be formally admitted to Category C5.
Natural populations breed in Africa from southern Mauritania to southern Egypt and Ethiopia, south to South Africa. Naturalized breeding populations in north-west Europe including the Netherlands and England.
The British List remains at 616 species (Category A = 598; Category B = 8; Category C = 10).
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