Latest IOC Diary Updates (4 Viewers)

[Larry Sweetland]

They are coming for our shearwaters!!!

Birders to arms! They'll be pulling them out of their burrows and lumping them! Baton down your lists!😳😆

 

[MJB]

Birders to arms! They'll be pulling them out of their burrows and lumping them! Baton down your lists!😳😆

That's not how to conduct yourself in public...! To nail things down or to secure them, 'batten' is the best option...!
MJB

 

[Markus Lagerqvist]

Feb 9 Post proposed lump of extinct Macquarie Parakeet with Red-crowned Parakeet.

Feb 9 Post proposed lump of extinct Lord Howe Parakeet with Norfolk Parakeet.

 

[Melanie]

Feb 9 Post proposed lump of extinct Macquarie Parakeet with Red-crowned Parakeet.

Feb 9 Post proposed lump of extinct Lord Howe Parakeet with Norfolk Parakeet.

The taxonomy of the Red-crowned Parakeet (and its subspecies) is a neverending story, in particular when you assume that the Norfolk Parakeet is still a subspecies of the Red-crowned Parakeet.

 

[YuShan]

Perhaps a stupid question, but using Scythebill all my "Collared Sparrowhawk" got changed into Sp. "Brown Goshawk / Collared Sparrowhawk", while all the "Brown Goshawk" were unaffected. Why could that be? It is all in the same geographic area btw.

 

[awiner]

Perhaps a stupid question, but using Scythebill all my "Collared Sparrowhawk" got changed into Sp. "Brown Goshawk / Collared Sparrowhawk", while all the "Brown Goshawk" were unaffected. Why could that be? It is all in the same geographic area btw.

Maybe more of a thread for the software forum, but what happened was that subspecies "rosselianus" - from the Louisiade Archipelago in PNG, and extremely poorly known - was moved from Collared Sparrowhawk to Brown Goshawk in the eBird/Clements 2022 update. So technically, if you'd just recorded a Collared Sparrowhawk, and hadn't indicated what subspecies it was, Scythebill (which doesn't know about subspecies ranges, just species) assumed that it should just err on the side of "safety" and call them a spuh of the two.

That was a fine call for things like the recent Golden-crowned/Golden-bellied Flycatcher change - where many birders have birded in the overlap zone, and it's just not possible for me to know which one you recorded. But here this was not a good decision, since it's exceedingly unlikely that your records pertained to rosselianus. So, to cut the long story short, there's a reason why this happened, but not a good reason, and I should've caught it before release. My apologies!

 

[YuShan]

Maybe more of a thread for the software forum, but what happened was that subspecies "rosselianus" - from the Louisiade Archipelago in PNG, and extremely poorly known - was moved from Collared Sparrowhawk to Brown Goshawk in the eBird/Clements 2022 update. So technically, if you'd just recorded a Collared Sparrowhawk, and hadn't indicated what subspecies it was, Scythebill (which doesn't know about subspecies ranges, just species) assumed that it should just err on the side of "safety" and call them a spuh of the two.

That was a fine call for things like the recent Golden-crowned/Golden-bellied Flycatcher change - where many birders have birded in the overlap zone, and it's just not possible for me to know which one you recorded. But here this was not a good decision, since it's exceedingly unlikely that your records pertained to rosselianus. So, to cut the long story short, there's a reason why this happened, but not a good reason, and I should've caught it before release. My apologies!

Thank you for your explanation! I already assumed it was something like that. Now it totally makes sense.
Btw: my compliments for the excellent Scythebill software!

 

[Mysticete]

Feb 11 Post revised link to Multilingual version of IOC 13.1 to include Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Greek, Hebrew, Korean, Macedonian, Malayalam, Persian and Romanian bird names.

Glad to see IOC leading the charge on names in other languages

 

[gusasp]

Feb 12 Accept split of Lesser Sand Plover into Tibetan Sand Plover and Siberian Sand Plover.

 

[opisska]

Feb 12 Accept split of Lesser Sand Plover into Tibetan Sand Plover and Siberian Sand Plover.

Any chance to ID those in winter? I have some from Cambodia which is exactly on the border of the distribution of the two subspecies on eBird - but again, if they can't be really IDed in field, then this distribution can be bogus.

 

[gusasp]

Any chance to ID those in winter? I have some from Cambodia which is exactly on the border of the distribution of the two subspecies on eBird - but again, if they can't be really IDed in field, then this distribution can be bogus.

They can! This in Swedish, but I think you can figure it out, lots of terrific illustrations.

 

[opisska]

I get access denied on that sadly.

 

[gusasp]

I get access denied on that sadly.

Strange. Attached pdf instead, see above.

 

[opisska]

Thanks! The PDF has only breeding plumage, so can't judge potential plumage differences, but there seems to be a consistent difference in bill shape which for my photos makes me lean towards Tibetian, no matter how much I would like them to be Siberian (as I have plenty of observations from the Persian Gulf where only Tibetian can be reasonably expected).

 

[Steve Lister]

Feb 12 Accept split of Lesser Sand Plover into Tibetan Sand Plover and Siberian Sand Plover.

So that means the British list will go up by one - unfortunately mine won't as I have only seen the Rimac bird, a Tibetan.

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

Thanks! The PDF has only breeding plumage, so can't judge potential plumage differences, but there seems to be a consistent difference in bill shape which for my photos makes me lean towards Tibetian, no matter how much I would like them to be Siberian (as I have plenty of observations from the Persian Gulf where only Tibetian can be reasonably expected).

I’ve not checked the literature but would not the ‘messy’ flanks feature hold up in winter as well as summer?

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

I get access denied on that sadly.

Try this

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

Or this…

 

[Mysticete]

I wonder if there are any ABA records of Tibetan? I would assume almost all ABA records pertain to Siberian just based on geography.

 

[AlexJB497]

The identification of these in winter is ably covered in the latest BirdingASIA:
Bakewell D. (2022) Identification of Siberian Charadrius [mongolus] mongolus and Tibetan
C. [m.] atrifrons Sand Plovers. BirdingASIA 38: 23-35.

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