Lost and found: Western Palearctic
In the second part of our series looking at poorly known birds from around the world, Josh Jones turns his attention to the Western Palearctic. Some species are long gone, but recent rediscoveries suggest that others are still waiting to be found.
Josh Jones turns his attention to the WP species that are long gone and ones whose recent rediscoveries suggest that others are still waiting to be found.
With its rich birding history, plentiful resident birders and well-explored landscapes, easily reached by well-developed transport links, there is a strong case for the Western Palearctic (WP) possessing the best-known avifauna of the world’s bioregions.
This, naturally, makes the scope for discoveries somewhat narrow in the modern age, yet remarkable stories continue to unfold on a surprisingly regular basis. The context to these generally differs from those in, for example, Asia (Birdwatch 346: 26-29), where species new to science continue to be unearthed with regularity. Most involve either rediscoveries of species missing for decades, or the detection of relict populations or range expansions of previously unrecorded birds that are common outside the region.
But that isn’t always the case. Let’s not forget that it was as recently as 1975 that Algerian Nuthatch was first discovered in the montane forests of its eponymous country. This rare, range-restricted bird has been located at just five sites in the intervening 45 years, one of which was only found in 2018.
This is the exception rather than the norm, though. Splits and other taxonomic revisions aside, the region hasn’t produced another new addition to the world bird list in living memory. Europe, with its dense human population and intensively managed landscapes, may offer the intrepid birder very little in the way of reward. But by contrast, great swathes of
North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Russia remain relatively untouched – and it is these southern and eastern frontiers of the WP which have produced the biggest revelations of recent times.
Some of these areas suffer political instability or conflict, rendering them off-limits for years, even decades, at a time and severely reducing the amount of exploration that takes place. Even then, many visiting birders habitually follow a trodden path, visiting sites where their target species are known to reside, leaving potentially good areas of habitat unexplored. In other cases, it is geography that hinders exploration: vast or remote areas barely touched by birders due to their logistical challenges.
Hiding in plain sight
But, as recent form shows, coming across surprises doesn’t necessarily equate to putting oneself in the remotest pockets of the region. In fact, some of the WP’s more popular birding destinations still throw up the odd shock.
Perhaps the most remarkable tale of all comes from Turkey. Twenty years ago, Brown Fish Owl was arguably the WP’s most talked-about ‘mythical’ bird; nowadays it can be observed from a tourist-filled boat cruise on a man-made reservoir, the birds barely opening their eyes as trance music blares from the passing vessel’s speakers …
Last documented from Israel in
1975 and known only historically from Jordan, Syria and Iraq, Turkey’s previous contribution to the Brown Fish Owl story had been a sole 20th century sighting. News of two fish owls at a remote locality in the country’s Taurus Mountains in 2004 sent shockwaves around the WP birding community. Five years later, dedicated expeditions to the area documented several pairs, and in 2011 the now-famous Oymapinar Dam birds finally became known to birders – despite having apparently been shown to thousands of non-birding tourists by local boatmen as “rare owls” for years. Another particularly famous contemporary example was the thrilling revelation that Common Buttonquail – or, in more traditional (and romantic) terms, Andalusian Hemipode – was alive and well on Morocco’s Atlantic coast in the 21st century. After no sightings since the 1980s, it was feared possibly gone forever from the WP, following its apparent extirpation from Europe (the species was officially declared as extinct in Spain in 2018). Rumours of encounters were shrouded in secrecy for several years, with the few that had seen this sensitive groundnester determined to put its welfare first. Gradually, though, intel spread and the publication of a 2011 paper fully documented the buttonquail’s return from the abyss. Over the last decade, Common Buttonquail has experienced mixed fortunes. A bird shot in Algeria in late 2019, some 1,500 km from the known Moroccan population, suggests that this inconspicuous and shy bird may yet persist over a much larger range than previously thought, and that its ability to evade detection might mean it is much commoner than feared. However, further study in the species’ Moroccan stronghold showed that the population declined considerably in the 2010s, largely due to changes in land management and associated habitat loss. Conservation efforts are now required to save this diminutive bird from being lost again, which this time could prove permanent.
Bar a possible sight record from Western Sahara in the Fifties, Golden Nightjar was essentially unknown in the WP as recently as 2015. For decades, birders had fantasised about whether this most beautiful of nightjars might sporadically visit the southern limits of the WP, yet it had gone unrecorded for 60 years and this was perhaps more of a pipe dream than reality.
That was until early 2015, when one was hit and killed by a car on the Aoussard Road, a popular birding area in Western Sahara. At the time it was considered just as likely an unfortunate vagrant rather than one of many, yet next spring several territorial birds were found in the same area, with further sightings in Mauritania. In 2018, WP
breeding was confirmed in the latter country for the first time, with chicks then observed in Western Sahara in 2019. In the space of four years, this enigmatic nightbird had transformed from uncharted vagrant to established breeder, demonstrating how quickly our knowledge can change in these remote regions – even in the 21st century.
Likely losses
While these high-profile examples demonstrate how entire populations of birds can evade detection for years at a time, even in relatively well-birded corners of the region, there are others that have sadly slipped away and are now very much ‘lost’.
Take, for instance, Slender-billed Curlew. Once a relatively numerous migrant and winter visitor across a wide area between north-west Africa, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, populations declined rapidly until the last documented birds were seen at Merja Zerga, Morocco, in winter 199697. There were numerous claims in the decade or so following this, although none were backed up with photographic proof.
While the optimistic view is that a small population may still persist somewhere, that seems unlikely given that observer coverage and awareness are greater than at any point in history and even unsubstantiated claims have dried up over the past 15 years. Unfortunately, this appears to be one that has most likely gone forever.
Other Moroccan specialities of yesteryear that also seem long gone – at least in that country – are two raptors: Dark Chanting Goshawk and Tawny Eagle. The former, once a highlight of the Souss Valley birding route, was blighted by incessant habitat clearance for commercial fruit plantations, with its favoured Argan forest heavily degraded by goat grazing, and has not been definitively recorded since the 1990s. Nowadays, it seems most likely that it is no more than a sporadic visitor to the southernmost reaches of the region. Tawny Eagle, meanwhile, may well persist in Algeria – as well as Tibesti in Chad, where it was said to be common in the 1960s.
Away from North Africa, Siberian Crane now lies on the verge of extirpation in the region. ‘Omid’ – a male crane that for more than a decade has migrated alone between Russia and Iran is now the last of his kind in the previously numerous western population. The old-aged Omid had long been suspected to pass through the WP on migration, with this confirmed in March 2020 when he was observed in Azerbaijan – an ultimate ‘blocker’ for the WP listers who intercepted him, for when he perishes the species will be gone for good.
Nile and beyond
If pressed to name a country with the greatest untapped potential for significant discoveries, many birders would point to Egypt. Huge swathes of this surprisingly diverse country are rarely, if ever, visited by birders. It is unique in that it has the Nile Valley, which snakes its way north from Lake Victoria and acts as a corridor for dispersal and vagrancy of Afrotropical birds that would otherwise be deterred by the vastness of the Sahara.
In 2012 alone, there were three stunning finds in Egypt. The first of these was in March, when Chestnutbellied Sandgrouse was observed in the Nile Valley around 150 km south of Cairo, more than three decades after last being seen. But this wasn’t a chance encounter with a vagrant, with around 100 birds observed – clearly the species hadn’t been lost after all.
A few months later, the poorly known Saunders’s Tern was discovered breeding in the northern Red Sea, not far from Suez – prior to this it was unknown in Egypt and had only been recorded before on three occasions in the WP, all lone vagrants in Israel.
But the most sensational find was a population of Yellow Bittern – a species supposed to breed no closer to Egypt than Oman, around 2,000 km away. After initial sightings in mangroves along the Red Sea coast in December, breeding was confirmed in 2013 and birds were found singing at a dozen sites. Evidently this was no recent colonist, and a significant population had been overlooked here all along. Preceding this, Three-banded
Plover was discovered at Aswan, at the northern end of Lake Nasser, in 2006
❝Golden Nightjar was essentially unknown in the Western Palearctic as recently as ❞ 2015
and confirmed to be breeding three years later.
What might still be ‘out there’? The enigma that is Verreaux’s Eagle, perhaps the most tantalising of all ‘known’ WP residents, is clearly still extant in the mountains along the Red Sea coast, even if breeding hasn’t been confirmed for many years – occasional sightings of adults continue to pop up from time to time, particularly from Marsa Alam southwards. Egypt is undoubtedly the best opportunity to ‘rediscover’ this species in the region after it was lost from Israel by the turn of the century. There is surely a good chance that Bruce’s Green Pigeon could be breeding somewhere in the Nile Valley, despite there only being a single WP record to date (near Luxor in January 2011). After a pair of African Mourning Doves spent more than a year at Abu Simbel from 2010-12, this feels like another likely breeder being overlooked.
Plenty of potential
Egypt has huge scope for outlandish, left-field discoveries in the years to come, but where else might produce? Mauritania, a nation far easier to visit now than a decade ago, has form. African Grey Woodpecker was recorded within the WP for the first time here in 2016 and has subsequently been proven to be breeding in small numbers. Northern Chad, meanwhile, has not been properly surveyed for decades, yet its Tibesti Mountains – perhaps the WP’s greatest unexplored birding goldmine – must surely hold a suite of birds not definitively recorded as regional residents for many years (such as Arabian Bustard or Tawny Eagle), and possibly also has one or two additions to uncover. Grasshopper Buzzard or Chestnut-bellied Starling, anyone? Running north to south, Russia’s
Ural Mountains extend some 2,500 km from the Arctic Ocean to north-west Kazakhstan, a significant swathe of which remains unpopulated. What ‘Sibes’ might breed here, on the eastern frontier of the WP? Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler seems as good a shout as any, but might Yellow-eyed Pigeon be an occasional visitor – even breeder – along the southern Ural valley?
The Caucasus too might yet provide a few surprises. As the rediscovery of Caspian Tit in Azerbaijan in 2017 shows, as well as the confirmation of breeding Shikra, this sparsely birded region has plenty to offer.
And then there are the region’s maritime areas, where seabirds go about their cryptic lives, far from prying eyes. Taxonomic revisions tend to account for most revelations in this field, but there are surely still birds to be found. Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel’s presence in the North Atlantic is the classic, slowburning story, but Black-capped Petrel looks a likely bet for the next confirmed breeding WP seabird – increasingly regular sightings around Cape Verde suggest that a small population persists here, and it feels like a matter of time until a colony is found in this vastly under-watched archipelago.
Despite being thoroughly birded for decades, the WP continues to throw up big surprises as our collective knowledge and understanding improves, and its vibrant birding scene becomes better connected and increasingly intrepid. While the 2000s and early 2010s were something of a golden era for big-name rediscoveries and additions, there is little doubt that more will follow in the years to come – especially for those who think outside the box and have the resoluteness and sense of adventure to stray from the beaten track. ■
References
Bonser, R. 2013. Rare Western Palearctic birds: Saunders’s Terns in Egypt. BirdGuides www.birdguides.com/articles/rare-westernpalearctic-birds-saunders-terns-in-egypt.
Expósito, C G, Copete, J L, Crochet, P-A, Qninba, A, and Garrido, H. 2011. History, status and distribution of Andalusian Buttonquail in the WP. Dutch Birding 33: 75-93. Gutiérrez-Expósito, C, García-Gorria, R,
Qninba, A, Clavero, M, and Revilla, E. 2019. The farmland refuge of the last Andalusian Buttonquail population. Global Ecology and Conservation 17: e00590.
Hering, J, Barthel, P H, and 6 others. 2013. Yellow Bittern Ixobrychus sinensis at the Red Sea in Egypt – first records of an overlooked breeding species in the Western Palearctic. Limicola 26: 253-278.
Khil, L. 2012. Rare Western Palearctic birds: Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse rediscovered in Egypt. BirdGuides www.birdguides.com/ articles/rare-western-palearctic-birdschestnut-bellied-sandgrouse.