5+2 Bird Species Added to ABA Checklist!

The November 2012 issue of Birding features the ABA Checklist Committee’s annual report, highlighted by the addition to the ABA Checklist of the following five species:

The November 2012 issue of Birding features the ABA Checklist Committee’s annual report, highlighted by the addition to the ABA Checklist of the following five species:

1. Providence Petrel
2. Double-toothed Kite
3. Rosy-faced Lovebird
4. Nanday Parakeet
5. Asian Rosy-FInch

By stipulation, the ABA Checklist Committee adopts all taxonomic decisions of the American Ornithologists’ Union Check-list Committee. (Yes, Checklist-without-a-hyphen for the ABA vs. Check-list-with-a-hyphen for the AOU. Go figure.) Earlier this year, the AOU Check-list Committee split the Xantus’s Murrelet into two species, the Guadalupe and Scripps’s murrelets. Thus, Xantus’s is deleted, Guadalupe takes the place of Xantus’s, and we get:

6. Scripps’s Murrelet.

The murrelet split and the five full-on additions raise the ABA Area checklist to 976.

Finally, the ABA Checklist Committee has done away with a “slash/combo”–the bane of every lister’s existence–on its checklist. The old Fea’s/Zino’s Petrel category is replaced with Fea’s Petrel. That results in no addition to the total number of entries on the checklist, even though it does permit listers to add a species (namely, Fea’s Petrel) to their ABA Area life lists.

The ABA Checklist has been revised to reflect these and other recent changes. Click here to view the complete Checklist.

The stories behind each of these seven entries are fascinating, and you are urged to read the thorough summary by committee chairpersons Jon Dunn and Dan Gibson and their colleagues on the committee.

Let’s discuss these checklist changes!

I’ll try to get the ball rolling with the two psittacids–Nanday Parakeet in Florida and Rosy-faced Lovebird in Arizona. In particular, I’d like to hear from folks who intend to go look for the birds. What are your plans? Also: Have any of you already seen these? If so, do you now add them to your life lists? Or, to count them, do you have to see them again, i.e., after the news?

Photo credit: Rosy-faced Lovebirds at Gilbert Water Ranch, Arizona, by Cindy Marple.