Members of BBRC have now examined the skins or photographs of the skins of most relevant specimens of Slender-billed Curlew Numenius tenuirostris held in museums in Western Europe. We are indebted to Didier Vangeluwe for his assistance in this matter. We have concentrated on that small number in 1st summer plumage and a working paper on identification features of birds of this age has been prepared for the committee by Jimmy Steele.
We were disappointed in receiving no responses to our previous press release asking for further information on the very small, short-billed, pale curlew that accompanied the reported Slender-billed Curlew.
There has been a delay in starting further circulation because of technical problems in producing very high quality video-grabs from one of the available films in which the two, apparently, very similar birds are seen side by side. This has now been resolved and the record will be circulated again in the near future and discussed at our summer identification meeting at Spurn Bird Observatory on 5th August. We hope that we have all necessary information to make a decision on this circulation.
