Announcements

• Terns adopting a grebe egg

  2020-12-15

  The impacts of the covid-19 pandemic will have escaped no-one, and we can conclude that the authors, editors, and peer reviewers of Ornis Svecica are no exception. Thus, after an involuntarily long hiatus, we are now happy to present a short communication by Lars Bern, who describes the peculiar case of a pair of Common Terns Sterna hirundo that took over a Red-necked Grebe Podiceps grisegena and included a grebe egg in their clutch! Read more in the paper, which is available at https://doi.org/10.34080/os.v30.21610 with Open Access.

  We are also glad to say that all of Ornis Svecica’s 30-year publication history is now available at the https://os.birdlife.se, either as individual papers or as whole issues. With time, each individual paper will be republished and assigned a DOI (digital object identifier), but this entails quite some work given that we have published almost 600 papers through the years.

  You can expect some several more papers coming out in the near future, so stay tuned!

  

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• Rare documentation of a chimeric Black Redstart

  2020-04-19

  Here is a peculiar story to lighten up the strange times we live in, with the novel Corona virus determining much of our days. We would also like to acknowledge that the Covid-19 pandemic affects Ornis Svecica, just like every other part of society, with editors, reviewers and others involved having more constraints on the time that they volunteer. For that reason, this story has been waiting for a while, ready to see the light of day. But this is prime season for singing Black Redstarts Phoenicurus ochrurus, so the timing is perhaps ideal.

  

  About a year ago, Nicolas Martinez observed an unusual-looking Black Redstart in pair with a typical-looking male. Seen from one side, this peculiar bird looked like a male, and from the other side it predominantly looked like a female, with some male-looking parts mixed in. This rare phenomenon is known as bilateral gynandromorphism, and may produce animals that are half females and half males, with female and male organs in the different sides of their body! 

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• Entering the 2020s with thieving pelicans and a new Editor-in-Chief

  2020-01-25

  Today, we are proud to officially open Volume 30 of Ornis Svecica. Last year saw many changes for the journal, and while we now have routines in place for the online publishing model that we implemented last year, this year comes with other changes. After an astounding 29 years as Editor-in-Chief, Sören Svensson now hands over this title to Jonas Waldenström. In addition, the editorial board is expanded with five new editors, who are presented here.

  

  The first paper of this volume is written by Hans Källander, and explores the interspecific associations between foraging Dalmatian Pelicans Pelecanus crispus and Great Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo.

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• Which stonechats breed where in Scandinavia?

  2019-12-23

  The European Stonechat Saxicola rubicola is a recent addition to the Scandinavian fauna of breeding birds. But where do they come from? Whereas several studies have failed to find any genetic differentiation, birds of the subspecies hibernans from the British Isles look different from continental birds of the nominate subspecies.

  

  In a recent paper, Reino Andersson systematically assessed photos of 404 males during breeding time in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and scored six characters that differentiate hibernans and rubicola.

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• Urban gulls and kite sparrows

  2019-12-10

  Two short reports on nest site selection in BirdLife Sweden’s research journal Ornis Svecica deliver one piece of ornithological news and discussion of one well-known but under-studied phenomenon. 

  

  Klaudia Litwiniak & Marcin Przymencki were ringing Red Kite (Milvus milvus) nestlings in Poland when they heard begging bird chicks of a smaller make. After some searching, they discovered that the calls came from Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) chicks in a nest embedded in the kite’s twig nest.

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• Half century closure of a nest box project: What determines whether a Pied Flycatcher breeding in subalpine birch forest will return the next season?

  2019-11-21

  

  What determines whether a Pied Flycatcher will return to breed in the Swedish mountains next year? Based on no less than 5,742 flycatchers studied over more than 50 years within the environmental monitoring project LUVRE, Erik Nyholm addresses this question in a new paper.

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• (Electro)shocking news: Decreasing trend of power line collisions and electrocutions for larger Swedish birds, but still a significant cause of death

  2019-07-11

  

  Thord Fransson and colleagues from the Swedish Bird Ringing Centre have analyzed Swedish ringing recoveries from the past three decades, looking at deaths caused by power line collision or electrocution. This is mainly a problem for large birds like owls and raptors (like the young Peregrine Falcon photographed by David Wetherall), and over the time period studied, no less than 921 ringed birds were reported with either of these causes of death.

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