Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!tut!santra!kaira.hut.fi!s30986u From: s30986u@kaira.hut.fi (Martin Helin) Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: Rarities in Europe - anyone interested Summary: Cream-coloured Courser in Finland Sept. 1989 Message-ID: <25572@santra.UUCP> Date: 28 Sep 89 12:21:35 GMT Sender: news@santra.UUCP Reply-To: s30986u@kaira.hut.fi (Martin Helin) Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Lines: 38 References: HI ALL BIRD WATCHERS IN THE NETLAND ! For a long time I've been aware of the existence of this group but it wasn't until this month we began receiving it at my site. Thus I'm not fully aware of what kind of readers follow this group. Anyway, I would be very pleased to here that some of you (especially in Europe) were interested in rarities in Europe (including vagrants from North America and elsewhere, of course). Please, let us all know what goes on in your country (Western Palearctic only please unless you people out there in the U.S. want to have a conversation of your own). Probably the best thing to do is to include words 'Europe only' in the subject line unless you can avoid distribution across the Atlantic in some other way. I'll try to distribute this only to Europe but I don't know whether it is going to work (*.rec groups are automatically distributed all over the net ?!). For a start I can tell you that the most rare bird observed in Finland this autumn is, by far, a Cream-coloured Courser (Cursorius cursor) - I hope I got the name right - a couple of days ago in the Western part of Finland. A schoolboy found the bird on his way to school and thought after succesfully identifying the species (sic !) that nobody's going to believe him unless somebody else sees the bird. That's how the twitchers got the word and the rumour says that some 30 bird-watchers managed to see this 'cosmic mind-fucker' before it was killed by a Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus) in front of the eyes of the horrified (or malicious, perhaps !) group of successful bird- watchers. It was the second observation in Finland of this African species (some 4000 kilometers away from it's homegrounds) the first being shot in the year 1893 - almost exactly 100 years ago. The first observation was also made in th autumn, namely in October. Martin Helin Martin Helin Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Internet : mhe@otax.hut.fi UUCP : mhe@otax.UUCP s30986u@kaira.hut.fi s30986u@kaira.UUCP