I have spent the past few days updating the County Check-lists, species county dot maps and all affiliated pages linked to those pages. On the one hand it was a pretty light update - 42 counties had updates with 66 changes/additions. 40 of those were new county records, and 26 were new breeding records. A big thank you to the birders who took the time to document and report confirmed breeding. But on the other hand, all check-lists had to be updated due to taxonomic changes in the 65th supplement to the American Ornithological Society (AOS) Check-list of North American birds. Please note that we use the AOS taxonomy and nomenclature which has some differences from eBird which uses Clements World Taxonomy.
The changes of note from this supplement include:
A change in the taxonomic order of the herons/egrets. Name changes are as noted here: The Night Herons lost the hyphen between Night and Heron (i.e. Yellow-crowned Night-Heron became Yellow-crowned Night Heron and same for Black-crowned. Don't ask me why - I just follow suit!) And Cattle Egret became Western Cattle-Egret to differentiate those in the western hemisphere from those in Africa and Eurasia, etc.
Barn Owl became American Barn Owl (split from the similar Eurasian Barn Owl)
House Wren became Northern House Wren - split from the topical House Wren subspecies which were elevated to full species status.
Common Redpoll became Redpoll as the various Redpolls were all lumped into one species.
If you have any questions on all of this, just send me a message.
As I said, check-lists, dot maps, everything has been updated. Any county check-list that does not have a November 2024 date on it is outdated.
Following are the updates that were made in this round. Format is county name first, number of species now on that county's list followed by a listing of the species added or changes to breeding status. Any species with an asterisk following the name (*) indicates a new confirmed breeding record.
As always, a big thank you to everyone who sends updates to me. They are greatly appreciated! And if you've never gone to these pages, there is a wealth of information and trivia buried therein!
Allen, 271 - American Barn Owl*, Cliff Swallow*, Painted Bunting*
Chase, 288 - Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Clay, 290 - Glossy Ibis, Say´s Phoebe, Pine Warbler
Crawford, 304 - Cedar Waxwing*
Edwards, 240 - Cliff Swallow*
Elk, 259 - Cliff Swallow*
Ellsworth, 314 - Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Finney, 359 - Mexican Duck
Gove, 251 - Eurasian Collared-Dove*, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Yellow-crowned Night Heron
