Thank you for raising that Shorty. We are in a stage where there is potential confusion about English names.
The Australian list (WLAB of BirdLife Australia) relatively recently adopted ‘Great Pied Cormorant’ in place of ‘Pied Cormorant’ as the preferred English name. That list also gives
names for subspecies, so has ‘Australian Great Pied Cormorant’ as the subspecies name.
AviList, following IOC, uses ‘Australian Pied Cormorant’ notwithstanding that NZ is the home of the nominate subspecies
P v varius. (WLAB had avoided ‘Australian’ where the recognised range included NZ, although ‘Australasian’ can be cumbersome as an addition.)
AviList does not give English names for subspecies - although some are beginning to appear in eBird/Cornell lab.
As I understand it, BirdLife Australia will use WLAB English names for the time being. Therefore, in my view, the AviList-suggested ‘International English names’ should be regarded
at this stage as only proposals for formal international communication. Of course they might become ‘official’ in a limited sense if adopted by a different organisation or publisher within Australia, and anyone can use them if they think that is in the interests
of clarity.
From: shorty <>
Sent: Tuesday, 26 August 2025 2:11 PM
To: Geoffrey Dabb <>
Cc: Canberrabirds <>
Subject: Re: [Canberrabirds] Time leaves its shadow behind
They have the same sign at Mulligans big dam, also I thought that Avilist has it as Australian Pied Cormorant?
On Tue, Aug 26, 2025 at 1:57 PM Geoffrey Dabb via Canberrabirds <> wrote:
One of the unfortunate effects of time is that it has reinforced the misleading ID of the cormorant depicted on the sign near the Snipe Blind, JWNR. Without for
a moment condoning the practice of DIY rectification of wrong signage, I felt some sympathy for the rectifier of this particular labelling. The original artist had clearly taken some care to show a Great Pied Cormorant (aka Pied Cormorant), by including at
least 4 distinguishing field characters, before the image was appropriated to add to the waterscape a more likely, but pictorially absent, Little Pied Cormorant. I expect that opinions will be divided on whether it was a GOOD THING that the well-intentioned
corrector had only an erasable texta pen in his or her pocket.
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