SARBN: Southern African checklist - version 07
Trevor Hardaker
Greetings all SARBN subscribers,
It’s been slightly delayed this year but, finally, I attach the annual update to the Southern African bird checklist here for your records (version 07 published on 09 July 2017).
As usual, all changes are listed on the second tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet labelled “changes”. Not too much has changed this time around and most of them are either taxonomical changes where the genus of a particular species has changed or the spelling of the specific name has changed and are now in line with the IOC world list or where several species have changed categories taking into account acceptances of records by the Rarities Committee. Since the last update, only 2 new species have been added to the overall list, viz. Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin and European Pied Flycatcher, taking the total number of countable species up to 973 species for the Southern African subregion.
Of possible additional interest, 2 other species, both because of splits, have been added to Category G on the list i.e. not countable at the moment. These are Mediterranean Flycatcher (split from Spotted Flycatcher) and Northern Fiscal (split from Southern Fiscal). There are references to specimens of both of these having been collected in the past in northern Namibia but, to date, I have not yet been able to track down and confirm with 100% confidence that these specimens exist or were correctly labelled and further investigation is required in these matters. Should confirmation happen in the future or further records of these within the subregion come to light, then they will then be moved to a countable category on the Southern African list accordingly.
Please feel free to work through this updated list and, if you pick up any errors, please do let me know. Also, please check to see that your various listing club totals are in line with this new checklist and, if not, please email your updated totals through to me and I will then update them on www.zestforbirds.co.za when I do the next update (hopefully, within the next few weeks!).
Hope you find the updated list to be of some use…J
Kind regards
Trevor