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2019 eBird/Clements taxonomy update - convergence with IOC/HBW mentioned (1 Viewer)

Now I know what its like for people who collapse in tears when Instagram is down. Ebird is down.
Thank you everyone for your patience while eBird is down—we’re working to bring things back up soon. In the meantime we recommend tracking sightings using offline checklists on eBird Mobile, and submitting when the website is back up.
https://twitter.com/Team_eBird/status/1159656612656766976 .

Back up as of this AM, EDT. Still no revised checklist, tho.
 
Just entered a checklist and discovered that hirundines now come in the middle of warblers !!! Acrocephalus, Locustella, then hirundines, then back to warblers. Weird or what ?

Steve

Order makes no differnce online where a search is easy, a field guide is another matter and I, personally, get fed up with the continuing rearrangements, hardly any field guides follow the same order.
 
Ok, I know this is totally unnecessary work when the update will be posted extremely soon, but I can't help it. I think I figured out all the 107 splits. Together with the aforementioned and Jeff's investigation, there are the following 50. No great surprises, many already recognized by NACC or SACC:

Stejneger's Scoter
Comoros Green Pigeon
Yellowish Imperial Pigeon
Bornean Frogmouth
Green-headed Hillstar
Blue-vented Hummingbird
Gough Moorhen
Subantarctic Shearwater
Bannerman's Shearwater
Andean Ibis
Black-rumped Buttonquail
Sula Scops Owl
Siau Scops Owl
Black-capped Paradise Kingfisher
Necklaced Barbet
Red-backed Flameback
Iberian Green Woodpecker
Socorro Parakeet
Rainbow Lorikeet split 6 ways (but curiously not Biak Lorikeet)
Venezuelan Tyrannulet
Small-headed Elaenia
Coopmans's Elaenia
Tepui Elaenia
Ceara Woodcreeper
Flame Bowerbird
Western Fieldwren
Tanimbar Friarbird
Biak Whistler (out of Little Shrikethrush, but no other splits)
Sharpe's Drongo
Norfolk Robin
North Island Robin
Rufous-capped Lark
Cinereous Bulbul
Klages's Gnatcatcher
Rio Negro Gnatcatcher
Inambari Gnatcatcher
Chattering Gnatwren
Yucatan Gnatcatcher
Campina Thrush
Pantepui Thrush
Indochinese Blue Flycatcher
Chinese Shortwing
Taiwan Shortwing
Himalayan Shortwing
Persian Wheatear
Aldabra Fody

The 3 new species are most likely Rote Leaf Warbler and the mentioned Blue-throated Hillstar and Cream-eyed Bulbul.

The lumps are probably the previously mentioned plus Bogota Sunangel, Forbes's Snipe and Erlanger's Lark.

As to the 48 extinct species, I've only come up with 42. All I found are recognized by BLI, but many not by IOC. I will be interesting to see if they will follow. Those that I find are listed below. Any ideas which 6 species I've missed?

Mauritius Sheldgoose
Reunion Sheldgoose
Finsch's Duck
Amsterdam Wigeon
Mauritius Duck
Mauritius Wood Pigeon
Mauritius Turtle-Dove
Reunion Pigeon
Rodrigues Pigeon
St. Helena Cuckoo
Red Rail
Rodrigues Rail
Reunion Rail
Hawkins's Rail
Hodgen's Waterhen
Reunion Gallinule
New Caledonian Gallinule
Mascarene Coot
St. Helena Rail & St. Helena Crake (though they mix up the names; podarces also unusually placed in Atlantisia)
Ascension Crake
Large St. Helena Petrel
Small St. Helena Petrel
Bermuda Night Heron
Mascarene Night Herons (3 species)
Bermuda Hawk
Bermuda Saw-whet Owl
Mascarene Owls (3 species, unusually placed in Otus)
Reunion Owl
Mauritius Owl
Rodrigues Owl
Reunion Kestrel
Martinique Amazon
Guadeloupe Amazon
Guadeloupe Parakeet
Oceanic Parrot
Broad-billed Parrot
Rodrigues Parrot
Mauritius Gray Parrot (interestingly i Lophopsittaca, not Psittacula)
Bermuda Towhee
 
I think I figured out all the 107 splits.

Off the top of my head, Venezuelan Tyrannulet and Coopman's Elaenia were already recognized by Clements/eBird, perhaps both in the 2018 update, or the Elaenia even in 2017, I don't recall?

It really is fun to look at this stuff, I catch myself doing it as well and doing (and re-doing) detective work also. Yes it will all be published shortly, but it's fun to think about, and I invariably learn (or re-learn) little tidbits.
 
Off the top of my head, Venezuelan Tyrannulet and Coopman's Elaenia were already recognized by Clements/eBird, perhaps both in the 2018 update, or the Elaenia even in 2017, I don't recall?

It really is fun to look at this stuff, I catch myself doing it as well and doing (and re-doing) detective work also. Yes it will all be published shortly, but it's fun to think about, and I invariably learn (or re-learn) little tidbits.

You are so right, my bad on the Elaenia and the Tyrannulet. Then we have two more to find!
 
You are so right, my bad on the Elaenia and the Tyrannulet. Then we have two more to find!

Thank you very much. Now I can get to work.

Comparing Clements with IOC, I find 266 splits yielding 329 species, so you know where to look further. All of your 100+ species are in the IOC list, although sometimes under different names (is the Red-tailed Wheatear splitoff the Kurdish Wheatear or the Persian Wheatear?)

The interesting thing is the lopsided distribution. The majority of the splits are oscines (after all that grumbling about too many tyrannids, there are just three suboscine splits - a woodcreeper and two elaenias.) And the vast majority of those oscines are in Africa or Asia, with a handful in Australasia, and very few in the Americas. A hundred more reasons to travel to the other side of the world?

Many thanks -- Daan
 
Good work by all involved. I had been thinking of contacting ebird and suggesting one Jeff Hopkins from Pennsylvania had caused ebird to be down by ceaselessly rechecking his life list. Nate Swick tweeted: Can anyone access @Team_eBird right now? I know the annual update causes some crazy stuff to happen but I've never had it completely disappear before.
Team Ebird responded: Power outage due to storm in Ithaca. Working on getting things up and running.


I was hoping the outage was related to the taxonomy update.
 
Cornell, has been good about keeping up with the Americas. They specifically said when they took over that their basis was to match NACC and SACC. They added the Australian Committee a few years later. So if there aren't a lot of splits in the Americas or Australasia it's because of the committees, not Cornell.

OTOH, they've been dragging their feet on Africa and Asia because there aren't really any true committees, per se. This just catches up with IOC on those regions.

Can't speak to why it's oscines and not sub-oscines.
 
Good work by all involved. I had been thinking of contacting ebird and suggesting one Jeff Hopkins from Pennsylvania had caused ebird to be down by ceaselessly rechecking his life list. Nate Swick tweeted: Can anyone access @Team_eBird right now? I know the annual update causes some crazy stuff to happen but I've never had it completely disappear before.
Team Ebird responded: Power outage due to storm in Ithaca. Working on getting things up and running.


I was hoping the outage was related to the taxonomy update.

Nice, Mark.

Actually, when eBird went down, I also checked the Lab of O website, and that was down, too. Since that has a Cornell address, I checked the main Cornell.edu website, and that also was down. So I figured it had to be a Cornell-wide problem, not just eBird.

And if you had ratted me out, maybe I'd get some slack from Cornell since I'm a dues-paying alumnus ;) Though I doubt it.

What I did was go through the spreadsheet from last year. Anywhere there was a "group" I put the parent species into the "Species Map" page in eBird. If the group was displayed under the species, I assumed it wasn't split. If some other species came up on the list, it suggested to me that it was a split from the parent species.

And I wish I had all of these on my checklists. As it is, I'll probably get 10-15 armchair ticks.
 
Jeff no rats. Where I come from snitches get stitches.
White eye:
The [ongoing] taxonomic update in eBird includes some changes not already
familiar to many birders (i.e., not adopted by the AOS, whose annual
published updates are familiar to most of you).

Especially relevant to Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties [feel
free to cross post to those listserves] is the new treatment of
white-eyes. eBird/Clements has adopted the conclusions of Lim et al
["Molecular evidence suggests radical revision of species limits in the
great speciator white-eye genus *Zosterops," *Journal of Ornithology
160:1-16, 2019]. The upshot is:

"Our" birds are considered to be Swinhoe's White-eyes, *Zosterops simplex*.
I hasten to add that this is VERY TENTATIVE -- we still have no firm proof
that this is what the southern California birds are, but it is the current
best guess. This taxon was formerly considered a mainland China and se.
Asia subspecies group of the Japanese White-eye, *Z. japonicus*, but has
now been split from that species. eBird has automatically changed all
previous entries for "Japanese White-eye" in southern California to
Swinhoe's White-eye.

"Japanese White-eye" has gone away. *Zosterops japonicus* is now called
the "Warbling White-eye" and includes populations from the Japanese
archipelago (mostly nominate *japonicus, *also introduced to and abundant
in the Hawaiian Islands) as well as various subspecies in the Philippines
and Indonesia which were formerly considered the Mountain White-eye, *Z.
montanus *(which has also gone away). So if you were used to entering
white-eyes from southern California into eBird as "Japanese White-eye,"
this is no longer the correct option (and, in fact is not even an incorrect
option as the name Japanese White-eye has been retired in favor of Warbling
White-eye).

Also, the "Oriental White-eye," *Z. palpebrosus*, is on a few old eBird
lists since it was established in the San Diego area back in the 1970s to
early 1980s. Because of the recent taxonomic revisions, that species is
now largely restricted to the Indian subcontinent and has been rechristened
"Indian White-eye."

So my recommendation is to enter white-eyes here as Swinhoe's (*Z. simplex*)
in your eBird lists, although you certainly still have the more
conservative option of "white-eye, sp. (*Zosterops*, sp.). " L. A. County
[and San Diego] filters have been set at "0" for white-eyes -- hence, all
entries are flagged and you need to "Show Rare Species" or use the "Add
Species" function to find them on the checklist. We've done this to make
certain there is a clear pattern of establishment before we stop requiring
documentation. We emphasize that there is still little indication of
colonization of the inland portion of the L. A. Basin and the valleys [or
the majority of San Diego], so reports from those area should always
include documentation.

Kimball

Kimball L. Garret
 
Anybody know which white-eye is in Hawaii?

from post 52 of this thread: "Japanese White-eye" has gone away. *Zosterops japonicus* is now called the "Warbling White-eye" and includes populations from the Japanese archipelago (mostly nominate *japonicus, *also introduced to and abundant in the Hawaiian Islands)
 
from post 52 of this thread: "Japanese White-eye" has gone away. *Zosterops japonicus* is now called the "Warbling White-eye" and includes populations from the Japanese archipelago (mostly nominate *japonicus, *also introduced to and abundant in the Hawaiian Islands)

Sorry, missed that. I focused on the California info. My bad.

But still no spreadsheet |:||
 
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Just checking the eBird for my local area to see what people are reporting and the results use British English like Tricoloured Blackbirds, Gossamer and Great Northern Diver! Is this one of the oddities caused by the taxonomy update or a permanent change?
 
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