SARBN: Southern African checklist (version 8)

[Trevor Hardaker]

Greetings all SARBN subscribers,

 

It’s about time that we had an updated Southern African checklist again, so please find attached the new checklist (version 8) attached for your records and information.

 

This checklist has been brought in line with the latest IOC world checklist (version 8.1) as well as the new South African checklist from BirdLife South Africa.

 

A full list of the changes can be found on the second tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet but, essentially, they are mostly taxonomical. There have been changes in the orders of some of the bird families and then there have also been some changes in the scientific names, both at genus and specific level. There have also been a handful of common name changes and these mostly reflect splits that have happened in the world e.g. we now have a Black-winged Kite because the Australian bird has been split off as Black-shouldered Kite (you can, of course, continue to call it what you want to) and the Miombo Double-collared Sunbird has been split leaving the one that occurs within the subregion now being called Eastern Miombo Sunbird.

 

We have also had 3 new species recorded in the subregion since version 7 of this checklist was published viz. Upcher’s Warbler, White Wagtail and, most recently, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, and all 3 of these have now been added into Category D on the list so are all countable. This brings the total Southern African checklist up to 976 countable species. Thanks also to Morne de la Rey and his committee for providing all the Afrikaans names for the checklist.

 

Anyway, please feel free to work through this checklist and let me know if you pick up any errors – sometimes I can’t see the wood for the trees when I am working on these things…! You are also welcome to share it with any of your other birding friends that may be interested in it.

 

Now that the new checklist is published, the next thing to do is to update all the various listing clubs hosted at www.zestforbirds.co.za. So, once you’ve worked through the checklist, please email your latest totals for all of those listing clubs that you qualify for through to me at hard...@mweb.co.za and I will then try and update them as soon as I can. It would be great if everyone could get their latest totals through to me by the end of Friday, 16 March 2018, if possible.

 

Enjoy the list and counting up your latest totals…J

 

Kind regards

Trevor