Changes to the British List (24 Sep 2018)
Eastern Orphean Warbler Sylvia crassirostris St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, October 2017.
© Jim Almond shropshirebirder.co.uk
The British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) has added the following species to the British List:
Eastern Orphean Warbler Sylvia crassirostris
First-calendar-year, Troy Town, St Agnes, Scilly, 12-17 October 2017 (photographed).
This bird was elusive in the field, giving limited views to the observers. So it was fortunate that photographs revealed chevrons in the undertail coverts, which are a crucial identification feature for the species, separating it from the closely related (and until recently conspecific) Western Orphean Warbler Sylvia hortensis.
Eastern Orphean Warbler breeds from southeast Europe to central Asia, and migrating to winter in northeast Africa to the southern Arabian Peninsula, south Iran, south Pakistan and India.
Further details will be published as part of the BOURC’s 50th report due to be published in Ibis in October 2019.
The British List now stands at 617 species (Category A = 599; Category B = 8; Category C = 10).
View the British List, sponsored by Leica