I agree with Tom and almost everyone else it seems - adding rarities
from Cocos and Christmas, and other Australian Island territories to the
"Australian" list is wrong - and unfortunately seemingly getting out of
hand. What I find irksome is for these birds to be announced/claimed as
"A new bird for Australia" when they should be claimed as a new bird for
"Australia and its Island Territories" or for Cocos, Christmas Island or
whatever. After all, these islands (Christmas and Cocos especially) are
a huge distance out into the Indian Ocean, far from the Australian
mainland; they are political territories, not geographical, and belong
to the Oriental zoogeographical region (NOT the Australian
zoogeographical region). Furthermore, these islands are situated nicely
to catch overshooting Asian migrants moving south for the summer. The
number of new species must surely grow quickly (as it seems to be doing).
The other worrying thing is that some field guide authors are trending
towards the inclusion of these birds (resident, vagrant, accidental etc)
in their field guides but retaining the title "Field Guide to Australian
Birds" or similar e.g. the new Slater which now has an amazing 115 or
thereabouts accidentals, vagrant birds (and some not yet vagrants but
could be in the future!) in the body of the guide many from the island
territories, a good number of which might not turn up again over the
next 100 years or more - if in fact they do turn up again. This surely
must be mind boggling to the average birdwatcher and to the public.
Already, with the recent new records from Cocos and Christmas, Slater's
must already be out of date. If the trend to include and illustrate all
of these vagrant species from the territories is continued, one can only
imagine what the situation will be like in 10 years given regular
updates to the guides. The new Slaters seems to be aimed at the the
relatively small number of twitchers rather than towards the average
birder or "Joe Public" neither of whom will probably get to these island
territories.
This trend seems to be playing into Simpson & Days hands. They have
always resisted the temptation to include vagrants etc in the main body
of the guide and have what seems to be the ideal situation with a
vagrant bird bulletin and a checklist for each of the island territories
at the back. Full marks to them - and for that reason I will now be
recommending that guide ahead of the rest. (I sell quite a number of
guides from my website both in Australia and internationally and often
have clients asking for an opinion on which is the best field guide.
From here on I will not be recommending those which are overloaded with
illustrated vagrants in the main body that have only occurred once,
those that turn up in the political territories which have nothing to do
with Australian birds and those that might turn up in the future.
Finally, I am not saying don't let upon visiting and recording in the
territories - keep it coming! It is interesting stuff. I hope to get to
those islands myself before too long. But for goodness sake get it right
fellas! You often do some brilliant work identifying these island
rarities - claiming them for "Australia" is misrepresentation.
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
