Re: Confusion: Little/Brush/Western Wattlebird

["Frank O'Connor" <>]

Robert Inglis documented some of the confusion that some new birders have
about the Little Wattlebird complex.

I have been told that it worked like this.

The type specimen of  lunulata came from WA in 1838 (HANZAB
Vol 5 pg 503).  The type specimen of chrysoptera came from
Port Jackson in NSW in 1802 (pg 489). Hence Christidis & Boles (1994)
chose Anthochaera chrysoptera as this came first.  However
many field guides prior to C&B chose Anthochaera
lunulata.

There was no problem with the recommended English name Little Wattlebird
until the split was accepted.  You have to remember the timing of
when field guides are printed.  Several field guides held off for a
while hoping that an updated taxonomy to C&B (1994) would be
published.  This didn't happen and they need to publish a new volume
and they had to guess which way the splits and names would fall. 
Here it depends on what you chose for the scientific name.  The
field guides (including S&D) that used lunulata had to find
another name for the Eastern States form.  Previous names had been
Mock Wattlebird, Brush Mockbird and Brush Wattlebird and they chose Brush
Wattlebird.

HANZAB followed C&B in accepting chrysoptera as the type
specimen and had to find a name for the WA form, and (to me living in the
west) sensibly chose Western Wattlebird to use for HANZAB.

The New Atlas of Australian Birds (2003) only shows one map because they
used C&B (1994) when they started the project in 1998(?) (before
HANZAB Vol 5 was published in 2001).  Data was only collected for
Little Wattlebird.  However it doesn't matter.  If you accept
the split, then it is a very simple matter that all areas shown in WA are
for Western Wattlebird.

Unless you are writing scientific papers, it doesn't matter a lot what
name you choose.  Readers can easily work out what you mean by the
area involved.  This is the case with many other species that have
been lumped or split over the years.

It doesn't matter much for your 'list' either.  Your list is your
own personal list.  If you want to submit your total to Tony
Palliser's web site to compare against others, then you must use C&B
(1994) and that hadn't split the Little Wattlebird.

There shouldn't be a problem when submitting photos to a web site. 
If the web site doesn't include the split, then there isn't a
problem.  If the web site accepts the split, and you post it to the
wrong species that the error can easily be spotted by looking at the
location of the photo, or looking at the eye colour and other features if
the lighting of the photo is good enough.

So in summary, there should be no confusion.  Little Wattlebirds in
WA are either Little Wattlebirds or Western Wattlebirds if you accept the
split.  Little Wattlebirds elsewhere are Little Wattlebirds. 
Brush Wattlebirds are Little Wattlebirds from the Eastern States. 
If you are confused, then this is a simple matter to work out which is
which.  There are many more harder issues than this to confuse
people.

_________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor           Birding WA http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au
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