At 998: Moved to the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World

-
     The work to move to one of the standard checklists was pending. I had birds written down in an Excel sheet which I was updating periodically. I stopped updating it for North American birds and moved to ABA checklist. I thought I will keep a similar checklist for India. Then, I realized it is better to keep a single checklist if I wanted to bird throughout my life all over the world!
   
     My Indian bird book had Eurasian or Common Teal as a distinct species from Green-winged Teal, while ebird had them clubbed. The Herring Gull I saw in England was treated as a distinct species from the Herring Gull in US by my 'Birds of Europe' book. ebird recently split up Mexican Duck from Mallard, while American Ornithologists Union have not accepted the split. ebird appears to follow Clements. I was taking the worst case in terms of counting to not count any of these and more. From a brief search it looked like India follows Clements. I went to https://www.worldbirdnames.org/, then I chose this to download the list: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ (v2018).

     I pretty much knew I would have a few species more if I follow a standard checklist, and spent a few hours each on Saturday and Sunday to compile my life-list. It turned out that I might have made an error in counting from my Excel sheet checklist which I had on a hard-disk and email without proper version control. I missed four species! Due to moving to Clements, I got Mexican Duck and Andean Duck. Andean Duck was (and still is wrt AOU) treated as a subspecies of Ruddy Duck. This further increased my count by two. So I am at 998 now! I also made a list with HowardMoore4.1. Herring Gull and American Herring Gull are distinct, Andean Duck and Ruddy duck are the same species, Black-winged and Black-necked Stilts are the same species, Mexican Duck is part of Mallard, Ridgway's Rail is part of Clapper Rail. So, on that list I am at 995 - https://abachecklist.blogspot.com/2019/06/note-only-subset-of-extinct-birds-are.html.

   
     I will be maintaining my life-list in google sheets, and I have linked a blog to it:
https://abachecklist.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-clements-checklist-of-birds-of-world.html
The list still needs to be updated with extinct birds, but I will do it over time. For now, the one Indian bird 'Pink-headed Duck', Dodo, and all the forty one North American birds are marked.

     I plan to update the list by looking at changes every time a new version is released, and now, I have one whole earth to look for birds!
Male Indian Peafowl near Amaravathy Dam, Tamil Nadu




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossed 1000 with a trip to UT-ID border

-
Image
     I found time to make a short visit to either Dry Tortugas to see the Noddies or south Idaho to see the endemic Cassia Crossbill. I called the Dry Tortugas NPS and got a response that seeing Noddies at a relatively close distance wasn't a guarantee. The only place a ferry would take you to is Garden Key, and the place (Bush Key) where the Noddies nest is closed for the bird's breeding season. I did see birds sitting somewhere on Garden Key photo'ed and submitted to ebird, but I want a good guarantee before purchasing tickets to Keywest and finding accomodation at the expensive place. Also, spring time would have the added benefit of getting to see migrants. This made be choose south Idaho.      Ticket to SLC was much cheaper than to Boise,ID and I booked tickets to start on Aug 17th and be back on 20th night. My first task was to research about Cassia Crossbill and the following link was very useful: https://idahobirds.net/birding-idaho/cassia-cr...
Read more

Chase 4: Bachman's Sparrow is bird 980

-
Image
East Texas Piney Woods      Bachman's Sparrow is a specialty bird of the Pineywoods. It is a 'Nearly Threatened' species due to loss of it's habitat. The bird is best found when it is singing. It starts singing from March mid, and it would be better for me to chase it in March rather than in April so that I can look at passage migrants in April. I had put off finding the bird until now as it is out of the way from anywhere. There is no reliable spot near Houston.  The best spot in Texas is Angelina National Forest which is 4.5 hrs away from Austin. Bachman's Sparrow       I took tea in a flask, some energy bars and started the drive Sat morning from ATX. I reached at 1:30 pm and slowly drove around Boykin Springs. I heard one singing around 3:30 pm but could not locate it. I heard another one around 4:10 pm, and I was joined by another birder visiting from out of the country. None of us could spot it, and we decided to play a tape. Out ...
Read more

Jungle Prinia brings me to 914

-
Image
     When I visited Vandalur zoo sometime in 1997/98, I had just started birding seriously. I was not impressed with seeing wildlife in cages. Though the good thing was they started giving plenty of space for wildlife to roam around instead of smaller cages. A couple of Red-whiskered Bul-buls outside excited me more. I could see green hills in Perungalathur/Vandalur area. A few years later I wanted to bird the hills, but had no idea where to go. Twenty years from my first sighting of Red-whiskered Bul-buls, I found the best spot to bird around that area - Repeater road, which went through a forest. I wanted to see my favourite Bul-bul species which I hadn't seen for a while. I got up early and took multiple buses and walked to the Repeater road entrance. People were taking walks, and sadly they were loud! Also, they stare at you when you bird in Chennai, but I got used to it just like the ladies in the city. I saw birds which I did not see in my previous trips to India -...
Read more