Our question: Which predatory bird lures its avian prey with imitations of their vocalizations?

Northern Shrike in Alaska. Photo: Gary Rosenberg

Our answer: The winter song of Northern Shrike–a fearsome predator if ever there was one–frequently includes imitations that are attractive to the smaller birds that make up a significant part of the shrike’s winter diet. The Gray Butcherbird of Australia is also said to use a similar hunting technique.

Senior Leader James Lidster plans a busy autumn:

Those of you who have traveled with me on WINGS tours know how fond I am of quoting the Dutch and their proactive attitude to splitting new species. For the past 15 years they’ve led the way in pushing the boundaries of the Physiological Species Concept (PSC), and slowly but surely many other European countries are following suit. Of course, it doesn’t mean that they’re always right, but they are, at least, making more birders more “taxon-aware.”

Well, with this in mind and the fact that my world list isn’t increasing that much, I decided to look into imaginative ways to increase my list. The simplest seemed to be to find a Dutch girlfriend and move to The Netherlands.

And so after 32 years in England (with a few of those years out of the country leading trips), I’m moving to Arnhem. Of course my girlfriend thinks it’s all for her, but my list really has shot up….

The Netherlands is a great place to live, close enough to the UK to nip back and see family and friends, with good infrastructure, great birding, and great apple cake–and with that in mind (the birding and the apple cake!) I’ll be setting up some new tours to my new home.

Early exploration of birding sites has already led me and Roy Slaterus to discover a White-rumped Sandpiper (Bonapartes Strandloper), about the 30th Dutch record. My new tours are sure to involve some winter birding for White-tailed Eagle, Smew, and thousands of geese; late summer/early autumn expeditions for an abundance of shorebirds; and early spring birding for woodpeckers, owls, and geese (cheating slightly by spending some time in Belgium).

The next few weeks will be taken up with the obligatory house maintenance and painting (there’s a reason I work as a bird guide and not a builder!), keeping an eye on the berry bushes outside to see if Bohemian Waxwing can make it onto the garden list.

Photo: Gary Rosenberg.

Of course I’ll be on the Isles of Scilly for a couple of weeks in October, a great place to enjoy some quality birding, meet up with old friends and tour participants, and maybe emulate last year’s success in finding England’s second Wilson’s Snipe (another one split by the Dutch but not by the English!) before a month in Ghana. The lengths some people will go to get out of working around the house!

Version 1.7 of the IOC’s World Bird List is now available on line. This list includes the recommended English names of 10,354 bird species from around the world; also available for download at the same website is a very useful concordance of the IOC names with those used in the latest edition of Clements–terrifically helpful for world birders.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, not the state bird of Texas–though it should be! Photo: Beth Russell.

September’s Hurricane Ike reshaped some of the best-known birding sites in Texas and Louisiana. We’re happy to report that Jon Dunn’s tour of the Upper Texas Coast will run in 2009 as scheduled, and that we’re hoping to have a revamped Texas Migration Week return in 2010. Meanwhile, Gavin Bieber’s Whooping Cranes will take place in January, and his Rio Grande Valley tour has been rescheduled to mesh with the April 2009 ABA Convention in Corpus Christi.