Albatrosses

["Greg & Val Clancy" <>]

Hi John,

Well if you want to be like most other people on this list just ignore C & B 
and tick to your hearts content!!!
I don't know why C & B wasted so many months of their lives painstakingly 
revising their 1994 list.  We don't need it - we have our 'Butterbums, 
Murray Magpies, Happy Families etc.' and if you put your head in the sand 
for long enough C & B just evaporates into a distant memory.
On a more serious note I did discuss the albatross taxonomy with Walter 
Boles and he made it clear that the genetic distances between the 
sub-species were not sufficient to support them being separated out as 
species.  It is still good to note sub-species wherever possible though as 
different sub-species may be under different levels of threat or decline. 
Some are very hard to distinguish in the field though.

Greg Clancy