Aligning with a name already in use
Change to the simpler and clearer English name Kashmir Nutcracker aligns with Rasmussen & Anderton (2012) and with Clements.
Nigel Collar (Collar 2017) proposed the split of Southern Nutcracker N.[c.] hemispila whose westernmost distribution is Himachal Pradesh, the remainder east along the Himalayas into a large slice of China all the way past Beijing; BirdLife Datazone map it separately from N.[c.] multipunctata, whose relatively compact Datazone distribution covers SE Tajikistan, E & E-C Afghanistan, a tiny bit of Xinjiang, & an arc in N Pakistan through Kashmir into India in Himachal Pradesh as its eastern limit. The descriptor 'Himalayan' would be better, if still imperfectly, applied to hemispila.This seems a bit odd, given it's range, even 'Himalayan' may have been better?
Apr 5 Revise English name of Nucifraga multipunctata from Large-spotted Nutcracker to Kashmir Nutcracker.
Well I was half right then, just the wrong half!Nigel Collar (Collar 2017) proposed the split of Southern Nutcracker N.[c.] hemispila whose westernmost distribution is Himachal Pradesh, the remainder east along the Himalayas into a large slice of China all the way past Beijing; BirdLife Datazone map it separately from N.[c.] multipunctata, whose relatively compact Datazone distribution covers SE Tajikistan, E & E-C Afghanistan, a tiny bit of Xinjiang, & an arc in N Pakistan through Kashmir into India in Himachal Pradesh as its eastern limit. The descriptor 'Himalayan' would be better, if still imperfectly, applied to hemispila.
MJB
Collar, N. 2017. Species-level changes proposed for Asian birds in 2016, and discoveries of new taxa. BirdingASIA 28: 12-22
You can see the detail by going to https://www.worldbirdnames.org/new/updates/proposed-splits/ if you want to check the specifics about a given splitI think a real drawback of the diary is that they don't always say from WHAT the split is, which makes following it a big difficult, if you aren't already familiar with the splitting ideas, or the species in general. Considering the amount of splits recently, it's getting quite confusing ...
An incredibly, different looking bird from Grey-headed.Two more added;
Apr 17 Post proposed split of Sumatran Woodpecker from Grey-headed Woodpecker.
Apr 17 Post proposed four-way split of Solomons Boobook.
Ecologically distinct, too. A very scarce and local species.An incredibly, different looking bird from Grey-headed.