SARBN: Southern African bird checklist - version 13

[Trevor Hardaker]

Hi all SARBN subscribers,

 

It’s taken quite some time to get this fully complete but, eventually, here is the newly revised Southern African bird checklist (version 13) now fully aligned with the recently published AviList global bird checklist. Thanks for your patience in waiting for it…J

 

You will find that it is quite different to the previous checklists that were published. Firstly, we’ve lost all the theoretical and non-countable species from the list just to avoid any confusion on what can and can’t be counted towards your Southern African list. Secondly, all subspecies have now been included on the checklist as well, so that you can keep separate tabs on how many of those you have seen in case there are ever additional splits in the future i.e. armchair ticks…J I have tried to get this as accurate as possible but, in some cases, it is just impossible to know which subspecies have occurred here. This may still require a little bit of refining so, if you pick up any issues or errors with this, please let me know and I will try and correct them in the next revision. I have also included the distribution range for all species and subspecies, as included on the AviList list, so that you have an idea of where each one occurs. Please note that these are direct from the AviList list and, in some cases, are not necessarily totally accurate as they might not include the entire range, but are good enough to give a reasonable idea of where each one occurs.

 

For the common English names, I have included 2 columns, the first one listing the official AviList English name, and the second one listing alternate English names which may possibly still be used in Southern Africa. At the end of the day, you can call the bird what you want to…J

 

There is also a column listing all the Afrikaans names and I am indebted to Stephan Terblanche and the Afrikaans Bird Names Committee for working through these and providing me new or revised names where necessary to deal with new species or splits and lumps.

 

So, what all has happened since version 12 was published on 18 June 2024 which had 992 countable species at the time…?

 

We added Dimorphic Egret to the list as a new species for Southern Africa which was found at the San Sebastian Peninsula, but this was short-lived as this species was subsequently lumped with Little Egret.

 

Other lumps since then have included:

·         Dune and Barlow’s Lark lumped together as Dune Lark

·         Cape and Agulhas Long-billed Larks lumped together as Cape Long-billed Lark

·         Karoo and Benguela Long-billed Larks lumped together as Karoo Long-billed Lark

·         Black and Yellow-billed Kites lumped together as Black Kite

·         Rufous-bellied and Cinnamon-breasted Tits lumped together as Rufous-bellied Tit

·         Green-backed and Grey-backed Camaropteras lumped together as Bleating Camaroptera

 

But, it wasn’t all bad and we had a couple of splits too:

·         Rock Martin was split into Large Rock Martin and Red-throated Rock Martin

·         Red-rumped Swallow was split into European Red-rumped and African Red-rumped Swallow. Both have occurred here as vagrants with the bird at Darling Hills confirmed as a European and the bird near Mutare confirmed as an African. Some of the other records are left as undecided for now as the details available on those records do not supply enough information to decide which they were.

 

I should also add that White Tern was split into 3 species globally and, although I have tentatively included it on the list for now as a Blue-billed White Tern, discussions are still underway within the BirdLife South Africa List and Rarities Committee and so this may well change once a final decision has been made. Whatever final decision is made will be included as an update in the next revision.

 

The last month has also been a little crazy with Dayne Braine finding a Sabine’s Spinetail in Etosha National Park and Cliff Dorse finding an Upland Sandpiper at Platboom, near Cape Point, both new species for Southern Africa, so they have been included on the list now as well.

 

So, what is the upshot of all of this…? With all the to-ing and fro-ing of new species, splits and lumps, we now have 990 countable species on the Southern African checklist. We’ve now got to try and find those additional 10 species to reach the magical 1000 mark before they go and lump a bunch of stuff again…J For those who have an interest in these things and like to keep a count of them too, our list also contains 30 orders, 107 bird families and 431 genera while, with what I have managed to include with all the subspecies so far, we have a total of 1526 taxa on the Southern African checklist.

 

There is a column included for your lifelist on the spreadsheet and you can go ahead and just add a “1” next to each species that you have seen (in the purple lines) to work out what your updated Southern African total is.

 

I hope that you find the attached list useful and please feel free to share it widely with all of your birding friends, and encourage them to join SARBN as well where they can get this info for themselves…J

 

Now we look forward to finding those last 10 species to get us up to the magical 1000 mark…J

 

Kind regards

Trevor