SARBN: changes coming on the IOC list

[Trevor Hardaker]

Hi all SARBN subscribers,

 

For many years, we have followed the IOC world list in terms of taxonomy for our Southern African checklist. Since there is no official entity overseeing the complete checklist for the Southern African subregion (but official entities overseeing the individual checklists for a number of the countries that make up the Southern African subregion), I took it upon myself to keep producing a regularly updated Southern African checklist. My intention with this was never to make any decisions on taxonomic statuses myself (I am not a taxonomist, or even an ornithologist, after all, just a keen birder!), so the simple solution was just to follow whatever decisions were made by the IOC (which comprised a committee of very competent and qualified people to make those decisions). And, as long as I keep going at updating our subregion checklist, I will keep doing that…J

 

With the current trend to reach a more unified global bird checklist between all the various taxonomic authorities e.g. IOC, Clements, BirdLife International, etc., there seem to be quite a few changes that are coming our way. Although the new release of the IOC World List (version 15.1) has not been officially published yet (but should come out within the next few weeks I guess), I thought I would just give a quick overview of some of the changes that can be expected which are going to probably affect our Southern African checklist.

 

As things currently stand, the only two changes that are going to directly affect our overall number of species in the subregion are the following:

 

Lump Agulhas Long-billed Lark with Cape Long-billed Lark

Lump Cinnamon-breasted Tit with Rufous-bellied Tit

 

There has been no indication as yet as to what the new English common names will be for the newly lumped species, so we will have to wait until the official publication of the list for those.

 

Further to the above, there are a number of lumps coming across the African/Eurasian region. Although none of these will affect our numbers, there is a chance that some of the English common names that we currently use may be changed in line with these lumps, but we’ll have to wait until the formal publication of the list to see what those are. The ones that may affect us here in Southern Africa are as follows:

 

Lump Miombo Blue-eared Starling with Lesser Blue-eared Starling

Lump of White-crowned Cliff Chat with Mocking Cliff Chat

Lump Hofmann's Sunbird with Shelley's Sunbird

Lump White-breasted Cormorant with Great Cormorant

Lump Red-chested Goshawk with African Goshawk

Lump African Hoopoe with Eurasian Hoopoe

Lump Grant's Wood Hoopoe with Violet Wood Hoopoe

Lump Madagascar Stonechat with African Stonechat

Lump Dodson's Bulbul, Somali Bulbul and Dark-capped Bulbul with Common Bulbul

 

There are also 2 splits coming which, again, will not affect our overall checklist numbers, but will probably affect the English common names that we currently use. These are:

 

Split polytypic Little Heron from monotypic Striated Heron

Comment from TH: Striated Heron will probably be retained for the species that occurs from Panama down to Argentina, and our birds will then become Little Heron.

 

Split Eastern Rockhopper Penguin from Western (Southern) Rockhopper Penguin

Comment from TH: All of the confirmed “Southern” Rockhopper Penguin records in Southern Africa refer to birds from the Prince Edward Islands which will now be called Eastern Rockhopper Penguins. To the best of my knowledge, we have never had a confirmed record of Western Rockhopper Penguin here in Southern Africa which breeds around the southern tip of South America and also on the Falkland Islands.

 

There may still be more changes coming but, at this point in time, those are all of the changes that might affect us here in Southern Africa.

 

I will keep you all posted as and when any further changes happen.

 

Happy listing…J

 

Kind regards

Trevor