I’ve looked a little further into this. I should make a correction: the relevant genus was changed from Egretta
to Ardea some time ago. Birdlife Australia adopted ‘Plumed Egret’ in Version 3 in 2019/2020. Now we are seeing a quite interesting transition process. Contrary to Birdlife, eBird for English (Australia) has adopted the temporary name ‘Intermediate
Egret (Plumed)’. However, ‘Plumed Egret’ is used in the parent list – that of Cornell Lab Birds of the World. EBird gives ‘Plumed Egret’ if you choose ‘English (IOC)’, which seems odd as the IOC list itself has not yet made the split. As to the consequential
mapping, I see the Christmas Island 2019 record is assigned to intermedia – rather unlikely, I think, but you’d need pretty good photographs to separate the 2 species retrospectively.
I assume that all this is following from the list-unifying exercise that is going on in the background, although there is not much recent information about that. Cornell Lab/Clements is said to be
getting in early and making taxonomic changes in light of general agreement, without waiting for adoption of the final list. I can’t imagine they’d make such a change otherwise, at this time.
Happy Egretting!
From: Canberrabirds <>
On Behalf Of Geoffrey Dabb
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2023 7:29 PM
To: 'Kim Farley' <>; 'Canberra birds' <>
Subject: Re: [Canberrabirds] For eBirders! The annual taxonomy update is starting 24 October
Thank you Kim. There has been some confusion about the Intermediate Egret. Without looking it up, I think it was about 4 years ago that the Australian list (‘WLAB’) recognized Gould’s
plumifera as the common ‘Intermediate’ egret (to be known as ‘Plumed Egret’) in Australia. This meant that reports of ‘Intermediate Egret
E. intermedia’ referred to a vagrant species from north of Australia. There was certainly some confusion about this. The Australian Bird Guide did not recognise the split, and the COG list was not brought into line with it. The eBird split will
probably be influential in promoting recognition of the split. No more Intermediate Egrets at Kelly Swamp then. The original rationale for the split was fairly slight, as I recall - had to do with breeding colour of the bare parts.
