SARBN: Southern African bird checklist - version 6
Trevor Hardaker
Greetings SARBN subscribers,
It’s that time of the year again when the annual update of the Southern African bird checklist gets published so please find attached Version 6 of the checklist, now the most up to date checklist for the subregion to be used for counting your various listing totals up on.
The first tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet has the new list on it while the second tab lists all the various changes that have taken place between this list and the previous versions.
In essence, we’ve only had one new addition to the checklist which are the very popular Yellow-throated Leafloves which many people have been to see / are going to see at Katima Mulilo in Namibia. Most other changes revolve around taxonomy with the genera of some species changing whilst we have also had one lump (Eastern Saw-wing is now lumped back in with Black Saw-wing in line with the IOC world list and is, therefore, no longer countable) and one split (Little and Subantarctic Shearwaters have been split and are now both countable in line with the IOC world list). Two potential future splits have both also been added in to Category G i.e. they are not countable at the moment, but may be split in the future, so it is good to keep records of them. These are Steppe Gull (based on the individual that turned up at Mkhombo Dam which was thought to most likely be of this taxon by numerous international gull experts although some are still not convinced that it is not a Caspian Gull) and Steppe Whimbrel (based on the recent well documented individual in Maputo and some other historical records which came to the fore). As usual, all Afrikaans names for species and potential future splits have been supplied by the local committee set up to decide on these things - thanks to them for their input!
This takes the overall Southern African checklist up to 971 countable species.
So, there you have it, our new subregion checklist… I will try and do an update to all the various Listing Clubs hosted on www.zestforbirds.co.za in early May, once all the Public Holidays are out of the way, as I think many people have taken some time off now for a break and might well be away birding (and hopefully adding to their lists!). In the mean time, you can all start sending through your revised totals to me based on the new checklist, so that I have them all when I get around to doing the update.
Feel free to share this checklist around to all of your friends as well if you think they may be interested and, if you pick up any errors in the checklist, please also do let me know about them.
Enjoy the listing!
Kind regards
Trevor