Latest Stories
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Beijing’s Nature, Including The Beijing Swift, Takes Centre Stage at COP17
Many readers will be aware that the UN’s biodiversity conference – the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP17 – is taking place in Yerevan, Armenia this October. It is an important meeting: for the first time, countries are taking stock of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, measuring…
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A first for Beijing: Mongolian Accentor (贺兰山岩鹨 Hèlánshān yán liù, Prunella koslowi) at Miaofengshan
The message came through on Friday afternoon. Qin Qin (沁沁) had found an accentor at the Yangtaishan Rosefields, up at Miaofengshan in Mentougou District, and the photos on WeChat set the pulse racing — this wasn’t one of our regular Siberian Accentors, a common late autumn migrant and winter visitor. The bill, the plumage tones,…
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Pallas’s Bunting to be split into Mongolian Reed Bunting and Siberian Reed Bunting
An important paper on the taxonomy of Pallas’s Reed Bunting has just been published in Avian Research: Buchheim, Franke, Dumont de Chassart et al. (2026), “Taxonomy of Pallas’s Reed Bunting (Emberiza pallasi): An integrative approach” (doi.org/10.1016/j.avrs.2026.100444). It’s open access and, for anyone with an interest in East Asia’s birds, well worth reading. The authors drew…