Brett Richards
Well-known member
The BOU has now published the 9th edition of its checklist, this time following IOC taxonomy. There are three records of Eastern Yellow Wagtail; Fair Isle 1909, Devon 2010 and Shetland 2011. The Fair Isle bird was accepted as ‘one of the eastern subspecies, probably plexa, tcshutschensis or simillima’, while the 2010 Devon bird, from which a DNA sample was obtained, was accepted as one of these three races. The 2011 Shetland bird was a sight, sound and photographed record, so none of the eastern races could be eliminated. I thought there might be a problem here. In the IOC list simillima is subsumed within tcshutschensis, so no problem there, but plexa is considered to belong in the Western group. How has the BOU got around this, if plexa cannot be eliminated? Has it just been ignored?
I found the ‘Isabelline’ Shrikes surprising as well; 8 accepted as Turkestan, and just 5 as Daurian (and 94 not assigned to species), whereas it seemed to me that most were generally considered to be Daurian. Can anyone supply a list of which birds were accepted as Turkestan and Daurian?
Brett
I found the ‘Isabelline’ Shrikes surprising as well; 8 accepted as Turkestan, and just 5 as Daurian (and 94 not assigned to species), whereas it seemed to me that most were generally considered to be Daurian. Can anyone supply a list of which birds were accepted as Turkestan and Daurian?
Brett