All
this is great for listers when splits occur and races’ ranges don’t overlap
– then you can be pretty confident what you have seen and an “armchair tick”
ensues – but when races migrate or overlap and you’ve only recorded at a species
level pre-split, you lose a tick...even though you saw the bird. For
example, say you’d only ever seen one Gull-billed Tern in Australia at the time
of year when the migratory race would be present. Well that’s now
split...which of those 2 species did you see?
But you get an excuse to go back and be sure...like when the Eurasian
Magpie got broken up a couple of years ago and the Magpies in Hong Kong suddenly
became Oriental Magpies. But on the flip side, your list...your rules so
who’s to say you can’t ignore the splits anyway?
Cheers
Tom Wilson
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2019 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] 2019 eBird Taxonomy
Update
I use the
downloadable Clements Checklist from Cornell which I believe is the base list
for eBird.
It comes in an easy
to use Excel spreadsheet with one line per race. Because the list is at race
level it is very easy to see what happens with splits etc.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
You get full access
to the spreadsheet and thus you can do with it as you wish. I update my own
Microsoft Access database from this list each year.
Also because the
list has one line per race it is easy to manipulate and extract for your own
use. Also each new list also includes the unique reference number from the
previous list.
If you think at
race level then who does what with this or that species is fairly
irrelevant.
Regards
Barry
Lancaster
From:
Birding-Aus <> On Behalf Of Tony
Russell
Sent: Monday, 12 August 2019 11:14 AM
To:
Cc: Birding-Aus
<>
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] 2019
eBird Taxonomy Update
Well I must say I'm amazed and pleased that many of you have
picked up on this taxonomy stuff. From responses received it's obviously of
various interest levels to different people depending on their angle of birding
approach. I was dubious about putting the subject up , expecting a stream of
criticism and even abuse. But no, you all put your own views clearly and that is
constructive , thank you.
As some of you have suggested I perhaps might do, I have
recently extracted all my ssp records from my species/ssp list and my remaing
list of only 771 ( as per the IOC amendments of July 2019) species is now easier
to manage without the complications brought in by binomial and in some cases
trinomial taxonomic nightmares involved in subspecies (accuracy ??). Yuk. Maybe
some of my present attitude to all this is a function of my inexorable aging and
ever reducing ability to get around like I used to, let alone getting home
to obscure taxonomic variables which test my imagination to sort out. -- and
what for ?
On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 01:24, Jason Polak
<> wrote:
I happen to really love taxonomy. I think it's fascinating.
I'm also
really glad people are hard working on it because it helps
conservation
and scientific advancement. It also helps much more than hurts
my
ability to track species, even though it has nothing to do with
twitching.
However, I am also a twitcher, and it is true that my
species list
actually does differ a little from some of the latests lists.
My process
is that I keep a spreadsheet as my master list, getting
the
classification and name from
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/. I
just copy
the birds I've seen along with the date into a new life
list
spreadsheet. If something changes I might try and correct it,
but
otherwise I just leave it as it is.
It seems that from the rate
of change on the lists, the number of birds
I quote that I've seen (which
is only 433 right now, I'm sure it will
get worse), will probably only be
at most plus or minus 5 birds away
from any given list even in a decade
from now. Even if its plus or minus
10, that is pretty close to any given
list that I'm happy.
And think about this, even if you adhere perfectly
to the latest list of
your choosing, I guarantee that if you had perfect
knowledge of the
genetic code for all the birds of the world and every
ornithologist
working together on it with unlimited funds, you'd again get
a different
list. And then that list might change again in a hundred years
due to
some slight evolutionary change or even a geographical change (we
all
know that happens) or simply a choice of algorithm to analyse
said
genetic data. That's just because species isn't a well-defined
concept
with a guaranteed answer of same or different for any two
individual birds.
What I say is do your best, keep on enjoying the
birds, and if that rare
species you saw two years ago gets split and you
don't have enough
information to identify how it fits in the new list, just
keep it as it
is in the old list. Your total will still be good enough, and
it
shouldn't rob you of the experience in seeing that
bird.
Jason
On 2019-08-10 7:13 p.m., Tony Russell
wrote:
> hi All, I'm finding these incessant alterations to avian
taxonomies a
> real pain in the lower regions. I try to keep my records
right but some
> of the ( proposed ) changes are quite complex and often
inadequately
> described such that the outcome is a muddle, hence the
frequent lengthy
> debates over who is right and who is wrong. I'm
sick of it, as I'm sure
> many others are too. Of course your attempts
are meant to help people
> keep accurate records in regards to their
species/subspecies listings
> but I've got to the point of "who gives a
stuff any longer". I know
> which birds I've seen where and for me
that's all that matters.
> Bye.
> Tony.
>
> On
Sun, 11 Aug 2019 at 08:24, calyptorhynchus .
> < <mailto:>> wrote:
>
> Except that at the moment we’re in a
splitting phase so you’re in
> little danger of
losing ticks!
>
> My main beef is why
have different taxonomies: HBW, IOC, EBird ?
>
Everyone should agree to follow one taxonomy. These changes
you’re
> talking about on EBird were made years
ago in the other two.
>
> John
Leonard
>
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 at 08:40
Bill Stent <
>
<mailto:>> wrote:
>
> Personally, speaking
as someone whose job it is to
enthuse
> people in a
hobby (in this case my other love, astronomy),
I
> think there are few
more efficient ways of sucking the
enjoyment
> out of
birding than taxonomy.
>
> You know that bird
you celebrated ticking off last year?
Doesn’t
> count any
more, it got lumped. Sure, the trip and the hunt
and
> the observation
were still great, but it’s one fewer
enjoyable
> aspect of
birding.
>
>
Bill
>
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