As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday 3 March 2019

UAE could be a hotspot for bird lovers


A new Arabic app aims to celebrate the diversity of migratory birds in the Middle East
Published:  February 13, 2019 15:44By Ashley Hammond Chief Reporter
According to BirdLife International, every autumn over two billion birds channel through the Middle East from Europe and Central Asia on their way down to Africa, before migrating back again in spring.
A quarter of that number, however, are shot or trapped by hunters in the region every year, and up until recently few efforts were being made to protect them.
Now, however, a new app — the world’s first to be launched in Arabic — by conservation charity, the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia (OSME), looks to change attitudes towards wildlife in the region.
Based on the book Birds of the Middle East, which was also translated into Arabic and launched at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai in 2017, the free to download app looks to take the fight for conservation to a wider and ever younger, tech-savvy, audience.
“Hunting is one of the big concerns so we hope to try and get people — the next generation or the generation after that — to appreciate birds for their natural beauty and incredible behaviour, rather than just being merely seen as something to be shot,” OSME chairman Rob Sheldon told the Weekend Review.

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