oodchat Shrike Lanius senator was removed from the list of species assessed by BBRC at the end of 1990. At that time, with almost 500 accepted British records since 1958, it was occurring too frequently to warrant treatment as a rarity. In general, little attention was paid to the subspecific identity of those recorded, and few submitted descriptions distinguished between birds of the nominate form, breeding closest to Britain, and those breeding on the islands in the western Mediterranean, L. s. badius (hereafter referred to simply as `badius'). As part of the extensive and ongoing review of the status of various bird forms recorded in Britain, we consulted the rarity archive with the aim of finding and examining potential records of badius, of which there were a small number of claims. As BBRC had previously stated, however, that it was of the opinion that the characters of badius were not sufficiently well defined to distinguish it from some individuals of the nominate form (Brit. Birds 80: 563), our expectations were not high. If badius had occurred in Britain, then a straightforward review of past records of Woodchat Shrike from the BBRC archives might reveal descriptions of individuals matching the features of badius. First of all, however, it was important to establish whether badius was reliably separable from other formsand, if so, to establish the key criteria by which it could be differentiated. Unfortunately, the treatment of badius, even in specialised literature, is frequently unsatisfactory (e.g. Lefranc & Worfolk 1997), and