Whilst birding the ‘patch’ last week I found a Southern Grey
Shrike Lanius meridionalis in the
bushes at one end of the spray fields. This is a favoured spot for shrikes to
rest and hunt from and I was able to get quite close using the car as a hide
(blind). The Grey shrikes in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia are very
confusing and there is often healthy debate between the birders of the region
over what species, and subspecies, individual birds are. Based on morphological
and ecological characteristics and geographical distributions, several authors
have divided the Great Grey Shrike species into two subspecies groups, a
northern and a southern one with most recent authors going a step further and
treating these subspecies groups as two polytypic species; Great Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor and Southern Grey
Shrike Lanius meridionalis. This is
based on alleged sympatry between the northern and southern groups in two areas
without any evidence of interbreeding, in combination with differences in
morphology and ecology. Intergrades between two Southern Grey Shrike subspecies
that occur in Saudi Arabia, aucheri (mainly
eastern areas) and elegans (extreme
west), have been reported from areas where they occur in close proximity, such
as south-west Israel, eastern Egypt and north-east Sudan indicating the
possibility of gene flow between them. These hybrids are likely in western
Saudi Arabia as well as the range overlaps here. Mauryan Grey Shrike (Steppe
Grey Shrike) pallidirostris occurs
regularly in the region as a fairly common migrant and winter visitor, with peak
migration in mid-March and September to October. This complicates matters with
Southern Grey Shrikes further as interbreeding occurs freely between pallidirostris and the locally breeding
Southern Grey Shrike subspecies aucheri with
an intermediate population occurring in north-east Iran. These birds could
quite easily occur in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia as well. As you can
see from the above the picture is far from clear and some ringing data would be
very valuable on these birds.
