l_raty
laurent raty
In the case of Short-billed Gull, I really believe that the only people who were confused about the names were the people voting on it. The rest of the world had a very clear view of what a Common Gull is and what a Mew Gull is.
Mew Gull is an American name for the Common Gull of Eurasia, which Americans started using in a sense encompassing brachyrhynchus, only (a while) after the latter was lumped with Larus canus.
The name was not changed immediately after this lump, however, as in the 1931 ed. of the AOU check-list, Larus canus brachyrhynchus was treated as a ssp, yet was still called Short-billed Gull (Check-list of North American birds - Biodiversity Heritage Library ). I assume the delay in the change was a result of the fact that L. canus canus had been removed from the check-list between this and the 1910 ed., were Mew Gull was treated as a hypothetical North American bird (Check-list of North American birds - Biodiversity Heritage Library ). Subsequently, records of canus became accepted again, which made a header for the whole species necessary in the check-list, and this received the name Mew Gull (1957 ed.: Check-list of North American birds - Biodiversity Heritage Library ) -- i.e., the name associated to the nominate form.
Mew Gull has never been used officially (be it in the New World or anywhere else) for brachyrhynchus alone. It has only ever been used in this sense in a couple of recent gull books, where the lump was reverted unofficially, and the name that applied officially in America to one of the pre-lump taxa was transferred to the other.
There is indeed nothing confusing in this.
Last edited: