Splits and lumps from C & B 2008 to BARC’s Australian Checklist accessed on the web on 28 March 2012.
Unfortunately Paul, you’ve caught me at a bad time as currently, I’m sick of taxonomists and unstable Checklists so you are about to cop a bit of a lashing. Only ‘slightly’ premature!
Firstly, when attempting to compare a web based list with another you need to specify a date and perhaps even a time! They are that unstable.
Today dealing with a BARC case of NZ Storm-Petrel I had to change the genus from Oceanites to Fregetta having recently changed it from Pealeornis! And the other day when making a case for Edible-nest Swiftlet found numerous changes to swiftlet taxonomy. It makes for a lot of work; all of it tedious and much of it unnecessary.
It seems to me that you must be in an executive position. Although you’re the one interested in knowing what the changes are, you seem good at getting the rest of us to investigate it for you. I think you’ll agree that your first attempt was a bit feeble.
In addition to the additional changes already raised by others, I think you also missed the following but you will need to check, and I doubt that these complete the changes:
Snares Penguin, split again from Fiordland.
Northern Rockhopper Penguin, split from Rockhopper now Southern.
Royal Penguin split from Macaroni.
Heard Island Shag split from Imperial.
Macquarie Shag similarly.
There are now two Emerald Doves, Pacific and Common.
Morepork, the Norfolk Island Boobook.
Frilled Monarch a New Guinea species is included I’d like to think because the bird we saw some years ago on Boigu Island in Torres Strait has been accepted as it was by Dick Schodde, but I suspect is an error meant to be Frill-necked Monarch.
If you maintain a world list you may need to investigate which name changes indicate a taxonomic change. Such as Tri-coloured Grebe, formerly Little Grebe, ‘Oriental’ Dollarbird, Canary and Ashy-bellied White-eyes, Pacific Koel, Great Crested Tern, Parasitic Jaeger, etc. etc. Also questions such as whether our domesticated Barbary Doves are really African Collared Doves as this, our list, (as I’m a member of BARC), would have us believe.
The BARC IOC Supplementary List, where species reside awaiting acceptance was in error by omitting without explanation Streak-headed Mannikin. It was included in C & B 2008 on the basis of some published details, but is now complicated by taxonomic changes, wouldn’t you guess! I think that most of us personally count species seen that are on this list but normally dump them if not accepted.
Last I looked this list needed updating to include at least the following seven species: Stejneger’s Petrel, Yellow-crowned Warbler, Chestnut-cheeked Starling, British Storm-Petrel, Asian Stubtail, Siberian Blue Robin and Eastern Crowned Warbler but as I said, these things change by the minute.
Some may be alarmed to learn that among the 854 Australian species I count on the IOC list, 16 are on the Supplementary List!!!!!
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
