Month: May 2026

Northern Territory




Hi folks
Just back from 8 days in Kakadu, Litchfield and Katherine Gorge. Not a birding trip; holiday with non-birding family, but did some birding in the margins. Saw a decent number of larger birds, but was struck by how few small insectivores I saw: zero thornbills,
robins, fairywrens. Now its true that I was rarely looking at the best time, and its also true I am a shit birder. But I did spend time in some birdy-looking locations, and I did not even see the arses of small birds disappearing into bushes, my usual experience.
Are such birds rarer or more wary in NT, or is this just an odd statistical anomaly. 
Kim
Kim Sterelny, School of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University, Acton, 0200, ACT, Australia
Kim.Sterelny@anu.edu.au 
61-(0)2-6125-2886


FW: Bird name

Thank you for all your responses on this. Now please, PLEASE, to anyone with no interest in English bird names:  do not read further.

 

Despite good intentions on all sides, we are moving into an untidy situation.  So far as I can see, the AviList taxonomy is being generally adopted, including by BirdLife Australia, for use in the online HANZAB for example.  English names are another matter. AviList has provisionally adopted the IOC English names. An AviList English Names Committee has just been formed, and its first priority is to consider English names for new species in AviList 2026.  After that, AviList ENC might be able to turn to review of adopted IOC names that create possible problems.  It is a possibility, no more than that , that ‘Australian Tern’ might be reviewed at that stage.  Perhaps BirdLife International will give support to ‘Australian Gull-billed Tern’.

 

 

Meanwhile, for the future, so far as I know, BirdLife Australia will maintain its own list of Australian bird names (currently ‘WLAB’).  A result of this would be that Cornell Lab could continue to use that list as  a basis for names under its ‘English (Australia)’ option in eBird.  Those will be matters for BirdLife Australia and Cornell Lab.  So, some possible untidiness ahead.

 

 

 

From: Martin Butterfield <martinflab@gmail.com&gt;
Sent: Sunday, 24 May 2026 1:12 PM
To: Philip Veerman <pveerman@pcug.org.au&gt;
Cc: Geoffrey Dabb <gdabb@iinet.net.au&gt;; birding-aus@birding-aus.org
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Bird name

 

Bird name

I would be very interested to hear what people think of the different English names for the one species that are now appearing:  sometimes  ‘Australian Gull-billed Tern’, sometimes ‘Australian Tern’.