only 22 records of the Lesser Grey Shrike (Lanitts minor) in the British Isles were admitted and five of those cannot now be accepted. Only 17 Lesser Grey Shrikes in nearly a hundred years since the first was identified in 1842--yet from the autumn of 1952 t o the spring of i960 at least 13 well-authenticated occurrences have taken place, a third of these being trapped and ringed. I n 1958 t w o were recorded (Brit. Birds, 53: 171) and, although there was none in 19 5 9, there have already been t w o this year. This is yet another illustration of the way in which the greatly increased ranks of competent observers and ringers have shown birds formerly regarded as extremely rare vagrants to be of almost annual occurrence. In this country we tend to think of the Great Grey Shrike (L. excubitor) as a northern breeder which comes t o us in winter, and of the Lesser Grey as a southern species. In fact, however, the former with its much vaster range extends considerably further south (as well as north), while the Lesser Grey nests or has nested in the east Baltic states and north-west Russia at 59В°N, o n the same latitude as Orkney. Its normal breeding range is from N E Spain (Costa Brava) and central and southern France eastwards through Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. However, in much of this area it is greatly outnumbered bythe Great Grey and it is in SE Europe--Italy