Gill,
I'm not the brightest market watcher but the tree shaking seems to have been going on for a while now. A lot of the mining stocks I follow look to have a bid/ask window that encourages selling between the bid/ask. And the trading volumes are low. Maybe cleaning up the lose shares and taking advantage of any bad market days.
I'm still betting on mining/commodities being the last blow off top before the general markets decide on a reason for a big break down. Time for a few wins and a cash up.