Ornithological Society of the Middle East (OSME)
The Ornithological Society of the Middle East (OSME) "exists to collect, collate and publish data on all aspects of the Ornithology of the Middle East region". This region includes the Caucasus and Central Asia: click on the map for a larger image or see the OSME website for more details.
OSME publish the OSME Region List (ORL) which aims to provide a definitive list of bird taxa that have been recorded in the OSME Region. This extremely thorough work has kindly been made available to BUBO Listing, and the version of it we use for Middle East lists, based on ORL v2.3, is shown below. The ORL details "taxa" rather than just species so in order to uses species level as we do in BUBO Listing we have applied the following guidelines to determine whether to include an ORL taxon:
- it is a parent taxon without defined species, allospecies or semispecies
- it is a species (and not a parent taxon)
- it is an allospecies or semispecies
- it's taxonomy is uncertain, but no parent taxon is included
The reader is urged to refer to the official ORL, in particular its "ornithological basis", for further detail and explanations.
We intend to introduce country-specific lists based on the ORL in future.
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