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

mb1848 said:
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?
Click to expand...

Mark,

Mine look OK. If you look at the checklist input page, on the RHS you'll see "Preferences." One of the options under that is language, and there are several English variants. Do you have "English (United States)" selected?

I was also told that if you download a new browser you may have to reset those preferences.

JH
 
Mark,
it may simply be that your cookie was deleted and that you need to login to ebird again before your usual preferences are restored. The same thing if you use a different device or a different browser compared to what you usually do.

Niels
 
One cool feature of eBird is multilingualism. If I hire a guide who does an eBird list using Spanish names and he shares that list with me, the names on my copy are automatically in US English.
 
mb1848 said:
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?
Click to expand...

I would worry if there was a bird called Gossamer !
 
Must say how impressed I am with how eBird has updated my lists based on the geography of the checklists I have entered over the years, all free of course. I was racking my brain trying to work out if I could add any of the new 'Square-tailed Drongo' species and found that eBird already had identified my Kakamega sighting as Sharpe's Drongo. Excellent.

I ended up with a net gain of seven species for my life list, plus 12 and minus 5. Three of the losses were various Lesser Whitethroats that I was never very convinced of anyway.

Steve
 
mb1848 said:
Clements Checklist 2019 updates are on their website.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/
NEW 2019 Overview, Updates & Corrections, and downloadable spreadsheet.
Click to expand...

Full documentation of Updates and Corrections for the website still is in the works, as noted by Daan Sandee. Apologies for the delay, but please remember that documentation also is embedded in the spreadsheet.

Speaking of the spreadsheet, we just posted fresh versions of the Clements Checklist files and the eBird/Clements integrated files, to correct two minor errors:

a missing English name (!) - Ashy-bellied White-eye for Zosterops citrinella; and

removing errant entries in the Extinct column for all (!) species of Leiothrichidae (Laughingthrushes and Allies)

embarrassing mistakes, now corrected - no changes have been made that affect the list itself, and with any luck no further errors were introducing during this process.
 
Tom Schulenberg said:
Full documentation of Updates and Corrections for the website still is in the works, as noted by Daan Sandee. Apologies for the delay, but please remember that documentation also is embedded in the spreadsheet.

Speaking of the spreadsheet, we just posted fresh versions of the Clements Checklist files and the eBird/Clements integrated files, to correct two minor errors:

a missing English name (!) - Ashy-bellied White-eye for Zosterops citrinella; and

removing errant entries in the Extinct column for all (!) species of Leiothrichidae (Laughingthrushes and Allies)

embarrassing mistakes, now corrected - no changes have been made that affect the list itself, and with any luck no further errors were introducing during this process.
Click to expand...

Tom, many thanks for all of your hard work - despite a few minor gripes from folks above, I still think it amazing you manage to hit the deadline. It is much appreciated as are all the efforts you are making on convergence of the IOC and other lists.

cheers, alan
 
Anyone know if eBird think they've completed the conversion of records? The original article saying in progress hasn't been updated since Aug 7th and not sure if they intend to say when it's done

The asian white-eye reshuffle certainly hasn't been completed - my records have some countries Swinhoe's converted and others not (e.g. SG not, CN done). Hume's none of my Everett's in peninsula malaysia converted and the total of global sightings is 26 presumably all manually edited since the list was changed in the app.
 
I would assume that updates and corrections are still ongoing until we either hear the opposite or the changes and corrections get posted on the website. Ebird is telling us that the changes become more and more time consuming as the size of the database increases.

Niels
 
njlarsen said:
I would assume that updates and corrections are still ongoing until we either hear the opposite or the changes and corrections get posted on the website. Ebird is telling us that the changes become more and more time consuming as the size of the database increases.

Niels
Click to expand...

Just finished a global comparison, and honestly it seems pretty good already. As others have noted, SE Asian white-eyes look to need a bunch more cleanup, and the Black-billed Thrush split looks as yet unhandled. Plus Ethiopian Cisticola is still showing in Tanzania. But mostly things looked quite reasonable!
 
This morning we again published fresh versions of the Clements spreadsheets, to correct yet another batch of minor errors:

eBird/Clements integrated checklist -
remove errant numbers from the English name column, adjacent to the subspecies of Splendid Astrapia Astrapia splendidissima; and

reposition African/Madagascar Sacred Ibis Threskiornis aethiopicus/bernieri to follow, rather than precede, the entry for Madagascar Sacred Ibis

Clements Checklist v2019 -
there were several instances of new eBird groups, or changes to the composition of eBird groups, that had been changed, but these changes had not been flagged as such. I now have added or revised the documentation in the spreadsheet for these cases. I did not keep a log of all such species, but representative examples include
Collared Inca Coeligena torquata
Creamy-breasted Canastero Asthenes dorbignyi
Common Cicadabird Edolisoma tenuirostre

I also corrected an obvious spelling error in the English name of Xenopsaris albinucha.

One correction I did not make in the new version of the Clements spreadsheet is the problem with Astrapia - meant to, but apparently did not. That mistake we'll just have to live with for now.

About a half dozen or so more substantive errors have been pointed out to me - mistakes in the spelling of a few subspecies names, or in the scientific names of polytypic eBird groups. We appreciate the feedback on such errors - but correcting these will have to wait until our next release (August 2020).
 
Spotted a strange inconsistency in new English names for what used to be Petronias: there is now a Yellow-throated Bush Sparrow as well as a Yellow-throated Sparrow next species along. Surely this can't be what was intended, can it?

Steve
 
Yellow-throated Petronia becomes Yellow-throated Bush Sparrow
Chestnut-shouldered Petronia becomes Yellow-throated Sparrow

in IOC 9.1 updates:
Stet (9.1) Yellow-throated Sparrow, a long-established English name, without the "Petronia" conflict.

So apparently Yellow-throated Sparrow keeps it's name because it's long established, while Clements didn't even use this name before :)
 
I have heard an argument that these are far enough apart geographically that the similar names will not be a problem.

Niels
 
I grew up with "Yellowthroated Sparrow" being a Southern African species (as might be guessed [though perhaps this is showing my age...? ;)] from the absence of hyphen); while the bird I first saw in Turkey was then called a Yellow-throated Rock Sparrow...
 
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