The inclusion of subspecies names – common and Latin for these on the new Birdlife Australia bird list is great. But it is certainly more conservative than IOC. Do we regard the new list as an extension/replacement of the C & B list, or do we now have three lists to work from? Would be nice if it (or any other) could become the singular list of species that we all use, irrespective of loss of relatively recent IOC splits.
Australian Reptile Park
PO 737 Gosford NSW 2250
(02) 4340 1022
http://www.reptilepark.com.au/ www.reptilepark.com.au
http://www.devilark.com.au/ www.devilark.com.au
Logo-FINAL (2)
======= Email scanned by PC Tools – No viruses or spyware found. (Email Guard: 9.0.0.1218, Virus/Spyware Database: 6.21090) http://www.pctools.com/ =======
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
I guess there is no such thing as an “official” list and birders are free to choose their own. This list may well suit BirdLife purposes from a conservation point of view but will birders adopt it? Will for example Eremaea (and all the other recording programs) move to use it – if not then I suspect it will have very limited adoption in the birding community. It will I know be confusing if birders in general use a different list from the one used by the main birding body (and even more confusing if there are several lists that birders use) but there is nothing to stop it! Having – like many others – spent the effort to move my list to IOC I am very reluctant to move back to this list – especially as I need an international list which was always the problem with C&B – some splits in C&B were hardly recognised by “international” lists (eg Great Egret) so one ended up with a two different Aussie lists depending on whether you were talking to an Aussie or a foreigner!
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
Hi John,
I was just speaking with Andrew Silcocks from BirdLife Australia regarding the checklist this morning. I agree it is a tad frustrating for there to be so many lists available. I get the feeling that Birdlife being so conservation minded really do need to follow the International BirdLife list (http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/info/taxonomy). This of course has disadvantages when compared to the IOC list (http://www.worldbirdnames.org/names.html ) – as this list is so much more dynamic, more up to date and strongly encourages input from Australia.
Andrew, went on to suggest that the list just published was initially going to include a comparison with the likes of the Christidis & Boles, IOC, Clements and Howard & Moore. This would then enable birders to choose which to follow. It would appear that most birders – especially the international ones prefer to follow either the IOC or Clements and most conservation bodies follow the Birdlife list. For species new to Australia BARC is currently following the IOC fortunately for the most part this has little impact although it is time for some clarification & review.
That said I can already see a number of errors within the BirdLife list – either way it certainly looks as though Christidis and Boles is now obsolete.
Regards, Tony