THE BEMPTON SHRIKE
The main excitement in Yorkshire at the moment is the presence of a bird at Bempton which is widely believed to be a Turkestan (Red-tailed) Shrike. Because of the complexities of identification of the 'Isabelline Shrikes' we have decided to await the birds formal acceptance by BBRC before adding it to the Yorkshire list and thus allowing inclusion in the Yorkshire Listers League. Any Yorkshire Listers who have previously seen an Isabelline Shrike sp in the County will already have included it on their tally under the 'common sense rule' and so their total will not increase for the time being and even if accepted as Turkestan will not gain numerically until they see an accepted Daurian. A copy of the situation explained sometime ago under the section 'THE RULES' is repeated below.
● Isabelline Shrike: The Isabelline Shrike complex has now been split two ways, Daurian Shrike Lanius isabellinus (also known as Isabelline Shrike) and Turkestan Shrike Lanius phoenicuroides (also known as Red-tailed Shrike) Daurian Shrike should be placed below Red-backed Shrike on the list and Turkestan Shrike below Daurian, however, as there are currently no accepted records of either in the County (see below) we will currently record it on the Yorkshire list as Daurian/Turkestan Shrike.
The current situation in Yorkshire is that none of the previous records of 'Isabelline Shrike' have been accepted to the new specific level which means there are currently NO accepted records of Daurian or Turkestan Shrike in the County. We are told that all records of 'Isabelline Shrikes' will eventually be reviewed by the British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC) so this situation may eventually change, however, we are led to believe that this is not going to happen any time soon. With this in mind we are quite happy to allow the 'Yorkshire Birders common sense rule' to apply again and as such if you’ve seen one or the other (eg an 'Isabelline Shrike') in the County then you can count it as one, but only as two when you have seen accepted records of both Daurian and Turkestan.
