Part 1 of AOU Checklist proposals

I rarely address the AOU's checklist proposals here, but I thought that Part 1 of this year's batch was significant enough to mention. Why? Well, we might be "losing" a redpoll species. The long-awaited proposal to lump Common and Hoary Redpolls has officially been submitted. I mention this here because I have had a ton of fun over the years identifying redpolls to species and subspecies levels, as you may have noticed on this blog. I'm not sure if this means I will be looking any less closely at redpolls if this proposal gets the nod, but it will probably take a bit of the excitement out of finding a nice frosty white bird among dozens of darker ones.

Also of note, a proposed Western Scrub-Jay split. No surprise there either.

Click HERE for a link to the ABA's summary.

 - NB

PS - I have been quiet here of late, mainly because there hasn't been much to share...but I will be traveling to southwest Florida next week and hope to come back with something worth writing about!

Comments

  1. James P. SmithJanuary 29, 2016 at 4:55 PM

    Hi Nick,

    I would say that it WILL take the edge off the interest in redpolls in winter in the same (but opposite) way that there was a huge surge in interest in Cackling Geese after the split in 2004. The redpoll lump will take a while to get used to, I think.

    Have a good trip to FL.

    Cheers,

    James

    ReplyDelete

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