Records
Clements World List Updates
We have just updated BUBO Listing to include the Clements updates from December 2009.
.jpg "White-capped Albatross (Thalassarche cauta)")
The number of updates was very large (one of the reasons it's taken us a while to implement them in BUBO!) Many changes referred to minor changes to English and/or scientific names. More significantly, there have been many changes to the family-level taxonomy of the passerines. Many new families have been created, and many species have been switched between families, almost all as a result of new discoveries from molecular biology. Simultaneously, the ordering of the families and species has seen major changes.
Note that this has been a complex procedure so please let us know ASAP if you see anything clearly wrong (e.g. a bulbul amongst the penguins - the taxonomic changes are often radical, but not that wacky!)
Of interest to many listers, there have also been a number of splits and lumps. Actually, the only real lumping is of Merida and Lara Tapaculos into a single species. In addition, Narosky's Seedeater is now considered only a colour morph of Marsh Seedeater, and Mascarene Shearwater is now included within the new grouping of small shearwaters known as Tropical Shearwater.
.jpg "Salvin's Albatross (Thalassarche salvini)")
On the other hand, splits have been announced of {number of new species in brackets}:
Speckled Teal (2), Shy Albatross (3), Tahiti Petrel (2), Little Shearwater (3), Audubon's Shearwater (2), Band-rumped Storm-petrel (3), Subantarctic Snipe (3), New Zealand Pigeon (3), Red-fronted Parakeet (2), Black-tailed Trogon (2), White-tailed Trogon (2), Violaceous Trogon (2), Scale-throated Earthcreeper (2), Red-eyed Thornbird (2), White-eyed Foliage-gleaner (2), Ruddy Foliage-gleaner (2), Greenish Warbler (2), Madagascar Brush-warbler (2), Red-flanked Bluetail (2), Littoral Rock-thrush (2), Dark-throated Thrush (2), Dusky Thrush (2), Spectacled Thrush (2), Blue-winged Leafbird (3), Golden-fronted Leafbird (2), Warbler Finch (2) and Common Redpoll (2)..jpg "Greenish Warbler (Phylloscopus trochiloides)")
.jpg "Green Warbler (Phylloscopus nitidus)")
[Note that a few of these splits will not appear as available to listers as they involve extinct forms]
For further details about how to update your Clements based lists, see how taxonomic updates are handled in BUBO Listing.
UK Eastern Crowned Warbler
23 October 2009
An Eastern Crowned Warbler, a long-anticipated first for Britain & Ireland, was found at Trow Quarry, South Shields, Co Durham, on 22nd October 2009. The finder posted a photograph of the bird on Birdforums and news quickly spread. The bird was still present at dawn on 23rd October and enjoyed by crowds of British birders.
Eastern Crowned Warbler has now been added as a "pending" addition to BOU, Britain & Ireland, Birdwatch and UK400 baselists, and so can be added by those birders who have made the trip to see this super little bird.
UK Tufted Puffin!
17 September 2009
The autumn rarity season notched up a gear or two in the UK on 16th September with the astonishing news that a Tufted Puffin had been found in Kent. Watched off Oare Marshes by just seven lucky observers for 20 minutes, the bird was seen in flight and on the sea, and diagnostic photographs were taken. Unfortunately for everyone else, it then flew off west along the Swale Estuary and despite much searching was never seen again (at least not at the time of writing!) It later transpired that what was probably the same bird was seen earlier flying west past Herne Bay. The finder, Murray Wright, has described the amazing events of the day on the Kent Ornithological Society website.
Tufted Puffin is already on the Western Palearctic list on the strength of a bird in Sweden in June 1994, whilst another was reported off Greenland in summer 2009. Its true range, however, is along both Asian and American coastlines of the north Pacific, breeding as far south as California. Vagrants from the north Pacific are not entirely unprecedented in the UK, with Long-billed and Ancient Murrelets, Pacific Diver, Glaucous-winged Gull and Aleutian Tern all recorded over the years. However, the frequency of such events does seem to be on the increase, with a very plausible hypothesis linking this with the retreat of summer ice from the northern shores of Alaska and Canada, whilst this summer the "north-east passage" along the northern shores of Siberia was entirely ice-free.
Investigations in captive birds have so far revealed birds only in "Living Coasts" in Devon, and enquiries have apparently resulted in confirmation that they haven't lost any. It looks overwhelmingly likely, for the time being, that this is indeed a wild bird.
BUBO Listing has now added Tufted Puffin as a "pending" addition to authorities available for British listing purposes (BOU, Britain & Ireland, Birdwatch magazine, UK400 club), in case any of the lucky seven want to add it to their lists (or, preferably, in case it reappears over the next few days for the rest of us!) If, at a later date, any of these authorities rejects this record then it will be removed from BUBO at that stage.
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