SARBN: potential future split

[Trevor Hardaker]

Just a quick heads up for those of you that like to be on top of these things…

 

The IOC published some initial proposed draft changes which may be incorporated into their next revision of the world bird list (v14.2) recently. Most of them have no effect on us here in Southern Africa, but one certainly does…

 

There is a proposal that Rock Martin will be split into 2 species and, as things turn out, it seems that both of these split species occur in Southern Africa, so we could potentially gain another species out of this on to our subregion list if the split is accepted and published in the next revision.

 

The Rock Martin that occurs in South Africa, Lesotho, eSwatini, southern Mozambique, south-western Zimbabwe, south-eastern Botswana and most of Namibia would be one species and the proposed name that I’ve seen suggested so far would be Large Rock Martin. The Rock Martin that occurs in central and northern Mozambique, most of Zimbabwe (except the south-western corner), most of the Caprivi and the northern parts of Botswana would be the second species and the proposed name that I’ve seen suggested so far would be Red-throated Rock Martin. This latter proposed split species also occurs widely further north in Africa.

 

This is not an official split as yet, so definitely not countable, but just thought I would make everyone aware of it, so that you can keep your eyes open for any Rock Martins on your various birding trips in the near future, just to make sure that you have the “insurance tick” in the bag…J

 

Yours in “armchair birding”,

Trevor