Reed Bunting has become a common winter visitor to village gardens here (in mid-Somerset) in recent years, with parties of up to a dozen birds sometimes present at our feeders.Aye, replaced by Reed Bunting. Possibly. If they can find one :C
With all buntings getting so scarce these days, what will be the last entry on the average UK "ordinary birders list"?
Reed Bunting has become a common winter visitor to village gardens here (in mid-Somerset) in recent years, with parties of up to a dozen birds sometimes present at our feeders.
I have been trying to get to the bottom of exactly what has led BOU to disband their taxonomic subcommittee. As most of the members of BOU’s council are staff members of public bodies, I thought I’d try submitting some Freedom of Information Act requests, but unfortunately this was of very limited use. The responses included “sorry, we have no relevant information” and “sorry, this information will take too much staff time to collate” (both valid excuses under the Act if true). Of more interest was that several of the public bodies told me that while there was relevant information to disclose, the holder of the information wished to claim an exemption under section 40 of the Act which safeguards “personal data”. From my previous experience of FOI, this exemption is typically used to protect things like names and addresses of private individuals, or other more sensitive data, from being disclosed: typically if a document contains a mix of non-personal and personal data, the public body will “redact” (block out) the personal information, thus addressing valid privacy concerns, while being able to release the non-personal information.
The use of this exemption in this instance seems to be quite a novel one, whereby personal data is defined as “opinions which the holder wishes not to be made public”: the FOI officer of one of the public bodies concerned shared my scepticism over whether this was a valid use of section 40. The justification cited in several cases was that the individual council members serve in a private capacity rather than representing public bodies. This is despite the fact that BOU lists the public bodies against each member’s name on their website, and that the only members of BOU council who are not employed by a public body are employed by or are a senior officer of the RSPB or the BTO, suggesting organisational sponsorship is a de facto entry requirement for membership. Anyway...
I then tried a different tack and approached two BOU council members who I felt may be close to the decision (Keith Hamer, BOU’s chair of council, and Helen Baker, who works for the UK government’s conservation advisory body, JNCC) to ask if they would like to voluntarily offer up any further information. Both in large part declined. Among the reasons I put to them why releasing more information might be a wise course for the BOU was that various rumours about the decision seem to be becoming established, and that it would be far better for an accurate account to be placed in the public domain if the rumours aren’t true. The rumours that I’ve heard repeatedly are: (i) that coercion by JNCC influenced the decision, (ii) that TSC members were sidelined in the decision-making after pointing out the problems with the Birdlife methodology to BOU council, and (iii) the decision actually taken was not the publicly-stated "disband TSC and see where the land lies" but instead that BOU will be using the Birdlife taxonomy, the line about lack of a Europe-wide consensus being a cover story, so goes this rumour. I suspect some of these are extrapolation or possibly even invention, which is why I think it would be better for BOU to be more transparent. What I found fascinating though in the responses received was that while the rumour about JNCC coercion was strongly denied, no comment at all was made on the other points. Curiouser and curiouser...
Provides a reminder that BOURC retains the spelling rueppelli (cf BirdLife, HBW, eBird/Clements), rather than ruppeli (H&M4, IOC, AERC TAC, DB).Sangster, Collinson, Crochet, Kirwan, Knox, Parkin & Votier 2016. Taxonomic recommendations for Western Palearctic birds: 11th report. Ibis 158(1): 206–212. [pdf]
AERC TAC 2012...Curruca ruppeli (Temminck, 1823) RÜPPELL'S WARBLER
Original spelling; internal evidence supports this. Emendation to e.g. rueppelli as used by Watson (1986) and Dickinson (2003) was unjustified.
Rüppell's Warbler Sylvia ruppeli (was Sylvia rueppelli)
Notice the correct spelling. Temminck used the spelling ruppeli in the text for the plate 245 and ruppelii in the "Tableau méthodique". As explained by Dickinson (2001), the plate 245 and the accompanying text were published in 1823 while the "Tableau méthodique" was published after 1836 (in 1838 or 1839 according to Dickinson pers. com.). The original spelling is thus ruppeli. The specific epithet is sometimes spelt rueppelli because the species is dedicated to the nineteenth-century German naturalist Eduard Rüppell. However, the spelling Ruppel is used consistently by Temminck throughout the text and for the French name ("Bec-fin Ruppel"), making it clear that the spelling is not an inadvertent error. The conditions of Article 32.5.1 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1999, the Code hereafter) are thus clearly not met. There is no use of the umlaut either anywhere in the text or in any of the spelling of the specific epithet used by Temminck. In conclusion, neither the addition of "e" after "u" nor the addition of a second "l" are justified by the Code, and these changes are unjustified emendations (see also Peterson 2002).
AERC TAC 2012 mistakenly cites Peterson 2002, but the relevant reference is actually:What is Peterson 2002?
Sylvia ruppeli Nomenclature Spelling
2006.05.11; 2008.06.28
- Originally spelled "Sylvia ruppeli" (previously I had this wrongly spelled myself as "ruppelli", but the Richmond Index card makes it clear it has only one "l" -2008.06.28) by Temminck, according to the Richmond Index, and confirmed by Normand David and Edward C. Dickinson, who examined the original description (in litt. 2006.05.10)
- Often, in fact usually, spelled "rueppelli", based understandably on the fact that it is named after Rüppell, who was German and spelled his name with an "ü". Spelling the specific epithet rueppelli would be correct if Temminck had rendered it rüppelli (which he clearly did NOT).
... according to the Richmond Index, and confirmed by Normand David and Edward C. Dickinson, who examined the original description (in litt. 2006.05.10)
Birdwatch, 4 Jan 2016: BOU splits Northern Harrier.Presumably the last... :-C
Sangster, Collinson, Crochet, Kirwan, Knox, Parkin & Votier 2016. Taxonomic recommendations for Western Palearctic birds: 11th report. Ibis 158(1): 206–212. [pdf]
Unless it's just a temporary glitch, the AERC TAC website now seems to have disappeared...
www.aerc.eu/tac.html
Back online today...The AERC website (not just the page of the TAC, thus) is being moved to another server.
(Webmaster on the AERC mailing list: "The website may go down for a few days by the end of this month. I will try to make this period as short as possible.")
...since the previous issue of BB went to the printer, the BOURC has announced two additions to the British List,... The members of both national assessment bodies – BOURC and BBRC – deserve great credit for carefully ploughing through an enormous amount of work to get to this point. In contrast, the decision by the British Ornithologists' Union to abandon its Taxonomic Sub-committee, announced at the end of last year, seems to be curious at best – and anything but measured and careful. There are plenty of birders asking whether the BOU is still the right organisation to be administering the British List – and whether the people at the top even care that much about it.
18 August 2016
Adoption of a global taxonomy
The Council of the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) recognises the value of the global harmonisation of avian taxonomy. Following unsuccessful attempts to seek an agreed European taxonomy it was announced in November 2015 that the BOU would disband its own Taxonomic Sub-committee and review the available global taxonomies with a view to adopt one system for all BOU activities, including the British List (for more information see http://www.bou.org.uk/british-list/taxonomy).
Notably, moving towards a single international harmonised taxonomy is one of the declared aims of the International Ornithologists’ Union (IOU), with a round table meeting being convened at 27th International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, Canada in August 2018. However, BOU recognises that it may be many years before this is achieved and would like to harmonise its own taxonomy with a global list more rapidly, rather than waiting for a final global consensus to emerge.
A working group from BOU Council and the BOU Records Committee (BOURC) met in August 2016 to determine the criteria to be considered and the process for selecting which global taxonomy to adopt. Factors to be considered will include the regularity of updates to the taxonomy, and the extent to which the process for decision making is open and transparent, as well as being scientifically valid and consistent. The major current global taxonomies (Bird-Life International/HBW, Clements, IOC, Howard and Moore) will be contacted shortly and invited to provide information relating to these criteria. All of this information will be considered at a joint meeting of BOU Council and BOURC, following which a decision will be made regarding which global taxonomic system will be followed by BOU.
'It has become apparent during my 14-year association that the challenges to the work of BOURC arise from within BOU itself. BOU is not a 'birders' organisation -- it is governed and administered by people who have lots of other priorities that do not necessarily include the British List. Decisions by BOU Council in the last ten years have undermined BOURC and betrayed a lack of understanding about the requirements and responsibilities associated with BOU's long custodianship of the British List, if the British List has become a peripheral, legacy activity from BOU, what can be done? Bringing BOURC's skill sets into BB 'fold' to form a joint committee that maintains rigorous standards in a single tier within an organisation, British Birds, for which the British List is a top priority, might be a price worth paying.'