Hi Birding-Aus,
The discussion on splits etc. is all fascinating but I think that the bigger question is the species list. At this stage we don’t have an up-to-date species list for Australia and the IOC listing seems to have been adopted by default, although there are some who are adopting Clements, such as Eremaea. This creates a lot of confusion and depending on which taxonomy you are using will influence which birds are of interest, as per Nikolas’s example of the Albatross.
Personally I would like to see an official listing adopted for Australia and one that is updated on a regular basis. I have used the IOC list for the past 4 years as (a) it is updated at least 4 times per year, (b) is current and consistent for all birds, given the duplicate use of common bird names, (c) uses English names which are consistent with most of the Asian, African & European field guides, and (d) gives me the most bird species seen for my world list.
Observing and recording the subspecies is also important however if one is using a field guide which doesn’t have the subspecies or a data base which only lists the full species, then one is not going to look for the subspecies. It’s only in recent years that I have started to look for subspecies, which is useful when these are upgraded into full species, and that has largely been as a result of using the IOC data base which lists all the subspecies and their distributions. The recent iPhone apps and some of the better field guides include the subspecies and these days I try and identify the subspecies when I can, even when travelling to new parts of the world, such as South American or central Africa.
My first priority is to identify the species and if there is time or there is an obvious plumage difference, then to identify the subspecies. This is of course contingent on having a decent field guide and/or iPhone app which provides details on the subspecies plumage and distribution.
Regards, Bruce Wedderburn
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