Western Olivaceous Warbler (1 Viewer)

I understand this has been split from the Olivaceous Warbler but there is no entry for it that I can find.

I believe it is now Hippolais opaca

D

The list in Birds of the World: Recommended English Names have them as Eastern and Western OW, respectively. The beauty of Opus as I understand it is that you can hit the link to Add New Page and make the page for WOW yourself. It may be prudent to include a link to the main entry for OW, and you may also edit the main page to say that it has recently been split with a link to your new page.

Niels

Yes and no. I really can't say I know much about this split, but from what I've just read it does appear fairly solid. However, this case can be compared to the Troupial taxonomy that I spoke to HelenB about recently. Below is a small section of a PM I forwarded to her:

"... this means that while there are numerous specific taxonomic treatments only listed by a single list, and yet other taxonomic treatments I personally think are the most accurate, I have limited taxonomical edits in the Opus to changes that are generally accepted, i.e. accepted by both Clements and Howard & Moore (today these are the only major World checklists, given that the Sibley & Monroe list hasn't been updated for more than a decade and therefore has lost its relevance in this aspect)."

In this particular case, the split of Hippolais pallida/opaca is accepted by the most recent Clements, but not by the most recent Howard & Moore (easily checked on Avibase; http://www.bsc-eoc.org/avibase/). Therefore I wouldn't make this particular split in the Opus, but instead make redirects pages for the various species (Hippolais opaca, Western Olivaceous Warbler, Isabelline Warbler, etc) that leads to the entry that already exists for H. pallida, and there add some info on the whole taxonomic situation under the section "Taxonomy"; e.g. "Now commonly split into two species based on mtDNA, song, morphology and behavior: Western Olivaceous/Isabelline Warbler (H. opaca) and Easten Olivaceous Warbler (H. pallida, with races....). See Description, Distribution and Behavior for further".

This may be an over-cautious approach, but otherwise it won't be long before someone comes along up-dating the Opus with the UK400 taxonomical list, the official Dutch list or whatever list someone may have. In other words; it could become a real mess in a very short time. Anyhow, this is just my opinion... others may think differently about this subject.

In any case I will edit the page later today following this cautions approach. Should the consensus be different, the info I add can easily be modified to follow the taxonomy where they are split (and get separate Opus articles).

Here's the page:

http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Olivaceous_Warbler

As evident, the info can easily be modified to follow the split, should the consensus be different from my opinion expressed in the earlier post.