Clements 2024 checklist update (2 Viewers)

[jts1882]

They say they need to update the draft taxonomy by late July, so there will only be a month of extra changes (rather than potentially four).

 

[Paul Clapham]

I reckon the spreadsheet linked in the first post is a bit outdated, dated in June.

It's a Google sheet, so it's not easy (for me) to know when it was actually last updated.

However the eBird system has reclassified some of my British Willow Ptarmigan sightings as "Willow Ptarmigan (Red Grouse)" so it looks like the split is happening in real life.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

However the eBird system has reclassified some of my British Willow Ptarmigan sightings as "Willow Ptarmigan (Red Grouse)" so it looks like the split is happening in real life.

Mine, too, although I can't be sure I didn't enter it that way.

 

[kweetal]

It's a Google sheet, so it's not easy (for me) to know when it was actually last updated.

However the eBird system has reclassified some of my British Willow Ptarmigan sightings as "Willow Ptarmigan (Red Grouse)" so it looks like the split is happening in real life.

The 2024 sheet hasn't changed since june (data yield the same checksum).

( and FWIW: comparing "scientific name" column: the 2024 sheet /minus/ the 2023b sheet (december 2023) yields a 1223 row difference
if "CATEGORY" = 'species' --> 350 rows difference
if "CATEGORY" = 'species' or 'subspecies' --> 905 rows difference )

 

[Mysticete]

Happy Ebird Taxonomy Update Day!

2024 Taxonomy Update—COMPLETE - eBird

The 2024 eBird Taxonomy Update will begin on 22 October. Big changes are already underway to Herring Gulls, House Wrens, and more as we prepare the eBird database for this year's revisions.

ebird.org

 

[gusasp]

Happy Ebird Taxonomy Update Day!

2024 Taxonomy Update—COMPLETE - eBird

The 2024 eBird Taxonomy Update will begin on 22 October. Big changes are already underway to Herring Gulls, House Wrens, and more as we prepare the eBird database for this year's revisions.

ebird.org

No checklist yet though…

 

[Paul Clapham]

However the eBird system has reclassified some of my British Willow Ptarmigan sightings as "Willow Ptarmigan (Red Grouse)" so it looks like the split is happening in real life.

No; it looks like I actually uploaded them under that name.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Various changes have appeared on my list on eBird - American Herring Gull appeared and Redpolls consolidated. Clearly a work in progress.

One change puzzles me. The majority of white-eyes that I identified in Uganda and Rwanda were Green White-eye. However, some in drier habitats away from the core Rift Valley, I recorded as Northern Yellow White-eye.

These have been mysteriously reclassified as Green White-eye. I changed them back and they have been reclassified again.

Does anything know anything about this?

Many thanks

Paul

 

[gusasp]

Here we go! Link here for complete update page. Checklists here.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I am not sure how the reclassification of some Northern Yellow White-eyes should turn some into Green White-eyes unless they have written the change programme to reclassify some in some areas not simply as part of the Northern Yellow White-eye split but as a reclassification to Green White-eye.

Be interested to understand this. Always happy to learn if I have made identification mistakes. It happens...

All the best

Paul

 

[kweetal]

Denis Lepage of Avibase was mentioned as the person who would be running the database during the WGAC process. And you can already see that Avibase includes some WGAC version names in the list of names for species (along with Clements, IOC and other checklist version). I suspect Avibase was always going to be the back engine of the website, whether hosted on Avibase or at a new domain name.

It's not possible to download whole checklists from Avibase (at least, I am not able to). I wonder, is that oversight, or left out deliberately? Will such a lack of download also be a feature/fault of the WGAC site? Of course nobody knows, and many people won't care as long as data is presented well in the browser.

But I hope they'll include a way to download all data.

 

[awiner]

Here we go! Link here for complete update page. Checklists here.

Thanks! (Time to update Scythebill.)

 

[kweetal]

Here we go! Link here for complete update page. Checklists here.

They removed the "authority " from the names in all these files. Weird.

 

[raymie]

Various changes have appeared on my list on eBird - American Herring Gull appeared and Redpolls consolidated. Clearly a work in progress.

One change puzzles me. The majority of white-eyes that I identified in Uganda and Rwanda were Green White-eye. However, some in drier habitats away from the core Rift Valley, I recorded as Northern Yellow White-eye.

These have been mysteriously reclassified as Green White-eye. I changed them back and they have been reclassified again.

Does anything know anything about this?

Many thanks

Paul

Please don't change any of your observations until after the process is done, it can really mess stuff up. It will all be explained when the process is done.

 

[pbjosh]

I am not sure how the reclassification of some Northern Yellow White-eyes should turn some into Green White-eyes unless they have written the change programme to reclassify some in some areas not simply as part of the Northern Yellow White-eye split but as a reclassification to Green White-eye.

Be interested to understand this. Always happy to learn if I have made identification mistakes. It happens...

All the best

Paul

EBird explicitly asks that you wait for the updates to finish to go back in and question/revise/etc. Things can appear wrong temporarily at times.

 

[Paul Chapman]

EBird explicitly asks that you wait for the updates to finish to go back in and question/revise/etc. Things can appear wrong temporarily at times.

Hopefully. At the moment the deliberate identifications (whether correct or erroneous) have been subsumed in nearly 20 Green White-eye sightings so are now impossible to identify. Temporarily would be good.

This seems the equivalent of some Red-rumped Swallow sightings appearing as House Martin during transition to Asian or African? But I'll wait. The difficulty is not having an audit trail & then scrabbling around trying to work out why or where things have changed which is similar to the adventive lottery. 😀

All the best

Paul

 

[raymie]

Hopefully. At the moment the deliberate identifications (whether correct or erroneous) have been subsumed in nearly 20 Green White-eye sightings so are now impossible to identify. Temporarily would be good.

This seems the equivalent of some Red-rumped Swallow sightings appearing as House Martin during transition to Asian or African? But I'll wait. The difficulty is not having an audit trail & then scrabbling around trying to work out why or where things have changed which is similar to the adventive lottery. 😀

All the best

Paul

In past taxonomy updates many of observations have appeared obviously incorrect for brief periods. They were always fixed eventually. You just have to be patient.

 

[Paul Chapman]

In past taxonomy updates many of observations have appeared obviously incorrect for brief periods. They were always fixed eventually. You just have to patient.

I confess that I did not even realise that this was a case affected by the update when I searched for my missing species a couple of days ago as it seemed to predate the start of the changes and I had already reworked my White-eye identifications due to my own concern reconciling my 2019 and 2024 trips. I had presumed that somehow I had lost my own changes.

Many thanks

Paul

 

[gusasp]

I just downloaded that spreadsheet and went through it in considerable detail. There's a lot of changes there, as there usually are. But the Willow Ptarmigan/Red Grouse split is conspicuously missing. The comment text suggests it is meant to happen, but there's only one lumped species in the spreadsheet as of yesterday.

Actually, the Red Grouse still remains unsplit in the final version! A bit weird, but I guess they'll reconcile that later on.

 

[Mysticete]

Lots of new subspecies groups recognized as well, and not just for lumped taxa. At least some of these seem to correlate with proposed splits in the new Costa Rican and Belize field guides.