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Cyprus Delights – Part III

10,000 Birds

However, my current favourite member of the family Cucilidae is the Great Spotted Cuckoo (GSC), a common bird in Cyprus in spring. Birds that nest in southern Africa winter to the north in the tropics, while birds that breed in southern Europe and Turkey migrate south to, you guessed it, tropical Africa.

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“Birds of Cyprus” field guide review

10,000 Birds

For the last two decades, Europe and the greater Mediterranean have been covered by one of the best field guides anywhere: “Collins Bird Guide” by Lars Svensson et al., published in the US by Princeton as “Birds of Europe”. pounds to carry around, “Birds of Cyprus” (BOC) has 256 pages and weighs only one pound.

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Cyprus Delights – Part II

10,000 Birds

One thing that I have learned from repeated spring visits to Cyprus is that no two years are ever the same. Look carefully and you might spot two Red-necked Phalaropes in this long-range photograph A bonus was finding a trio of Red-necked Phalaropes, a regular migrant through Cyprus but not one you can always be sure of seeing.

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Cypriot Delights: Part I

10,000 Birds

I’ve been a regular visitor to the island of Cyprus for over 25 years, making around a dozen trips during this period, every one in search of birds. According to the taxonomists, these weren’t regular Scops Owls ( Otus scops ) but the endemic Cyprus Scops Owl ( Otus cyprius ). Laughing Dove : now a common resident on Cyprus.

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Closing in on the Magic Double Century

10,000 Birds

My target at the start of the year was 200 species in the UK and 300 in Europe, so I’ve achieved the latter, while the chances of reaching the former are pretty good. In Cyprus in April I delighted in watching several Little Crakes plus a splendid Baillon’s Crake, all of which proved easy to see, if not photograph. Wood Sandpiper.

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European Call to End Bird Trapping

10,000 Birds

The big story of the fortnight in Cyprus isn’t about birds, but it crosses the path of birding (kinda). It seems that it came off rather well, and was co-organized by the Cyprus Game Fund and members of the Bern Convention. Which gets me to the real big news in Cyprus of the fortnight, indirectly anyway.

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Flight Identification of European Passerines and Select Landbirds

10,000 Birds

Since the 2nd edition of the Collins Bird Guide (published as “Birds of Europe” in the US) from 2009, the field guide market for European guides is practically dead. 850 illustrations by Tomasz Cofta are both accurate and stunning, and 2,400 photos by Michal Jakuj and 189 other photographers from Europe and Asia are good documentary shots.

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