Southern African bird checklist - version 12

[Trevor Hardaker]

Hello all SARBN subscribers,

 

It’s hard to believe that ver 11 of the Southern African bird checklist was published back in August 2022 and I haven’t published an update since then!! Sorry about that – time has just disappeared without me realising it. But, nevertheless, taking into account all the latest world list updates from the IOC (ver 14.1), please find attached the new and updated Southern African bird checklist for you to have a look at (ver 12).

 

All the changes have been noted on the tab labelled “changes” at the bottom of the spreadsheet, but here is a quick overview of some of them:

 

·         2 new species have been added to the list since the last update (ver 11) which are Pincoya Storm Petrel and Woodchat Shrike. This takes the Southern African list up to 992 countable species now.

·         White-breasted Waterhen has been slotted into Category E (not countable) as it was not accepted by the BLSA Rarities Committee as a genuine vagrant.

·         Several common names have been changed in line with global splits of certain species by the IOC and these include Crested Guineafowl to Southern Crested Guineafowl, Woolly-necked Stork to African Woolly-necked Stork, Lesser Sand Plover to Tibetan Sand Plover, Intermediate Egret (back) to Yellow-billed Egret and Common Chaffinch to Eurasian Chaffinch.

·         Two common names have been changed in line with global lumps of certain species by the IOC and these are Common Square-tailed Drongo (back) to just Square-tailed Drongo and Red-backed Mannikin changed to Black-and-white Mannikin. In terms of the latter one, our local birds have been lumped with the birds further north on the continent for which the name makes sense, but it really doesn’t work well for our local birds…!

·         Other common names that have been changed by the IOC and are changed on this list (but you can continue to call them what you want) are Wandering Albatross to Snowy Albatross and Common House Martin to Western House Martin.

·         Red-throated Rock Martin has been added to Category G as a potential future split.

·         A number of other taxonomical changes have also been made e.g. changes in the order of families, changes to genera, etc to be in line with the latest IOC list.

 

Please work through the latest checklist and let me know if you pick up any errors in it. This will also now be the correct checklist to use to for counting up all your various listing club totals that are hosted on www.zestforbirds.co.za. Now I just need to find some time to update all of those, but you can start sending through your updates to all the various listing clubs so long and I will see when I can make some time to update them all…J

 

I hope you find it of some use. Enjoy the listing…J

 

Kind regards

Trevor