Flight Identification of European Raptors

Identification of birds of prey in flight will always be a problem. The best of us will never be able to feel completely confident about a group of species that shows such diversity of plumage, whose silhouettes vary in different circumstances and for which the challenge of identification is so often at considerable range. We four have been studying flight identification of raptors for at least seven years— mostly in Europe, but also in Asia and Africa. A chance meeting in autumn 1968 between B.P.N, and R.F.P. at the now legendary Camlica Hills of the Turkish Bosphorus brought the Danish and English teams together and it was agreed to co-operate in a series of papers covering all the European raptors. Shortly afterwards, the editors of British Birds asked us to consider publication in this journal and so the scheme was born. The series will be completed in eight parts: