Just to expand on my rather brief posting earlier, I agree with Geoff C "philosophically" on this, I believe.
By that I essentially mean that I think the taxonomic issue is of prime importance. More specifically I think it is essential that we "farm this out" to a qualified scientific body - and any reference to the IOC website confirms the quality of the individual scientists involved, even if one or two "senior members" are also in fact "deceased members" (they clearly up-date the World Bird list more regularly than the membership categories!). Taxonomic changes involve either (i) the splitting of species, very few of which in this case affect us directly - but those that do, it seems to me, are all really very much ones we have already made in our own minds and/or are well-acquainted with, eg Spot-billed Ducks, forms of "Hodgson's" Hawk Cuckoo - or (ii) involve higher level taxonomics at genus level, such as within tits and gulls, which are very widely accepted and seem to me to be used in most recently produced field guides eg Brazil's Birds of East Asia (which follows Howard and Moore 3rd ed 2003, so does not in fact have the Starling generic splits - but then the production of a field guide is a one-off operation whereas the keeping of a national/regional list is an on-going matter, making "stability" ultimately unachievable and indeed contrary to the objectives of the exercise).
By the same token and, again, as I understand it, in line with Geoff C's thinking, I think vernacular names are of much less importance, but not of no significance whatsoever. Again it seems to me the vast majority of vernacular name changes here are not going to cause any practical or affective (sic!) difficulty to most users, not the least because the Chinese names are mainly used here now, surely, and they ie the Chinese names, are, for that reason, a less insignificant issue, but one that needs to be dealt with separately.
So, I don't really have a problem with "Swift Tern" or even "Fork-tailed Swift" if that's what signing up to the IOC position on taxonomy (=scientific name effectively) + international English name means, even though I don't like either at all, and will undoubtedly for my remaining years utter "Great Crested Tern!" or "Pacific Swift" (probably more quietly) on managing to make either species out. And I'm really happy to be using "White's Thrush" again.
In fact it seems to me there is only one serious problem with the names and that is Chinese/Light-vented Bulbul (which I hadn't noticed earlier because it seems to me it had not been highlighted, and nor had the purely orthographic change from Button-quail to Buttonquail - not a criticism at all, as it is quite clear Geoff, and maybe others, have given a lot of their own time over to this issue).
Chinese Bulbul is a well-established and more sensible name for an abundant bird here, and resistance to that change is very understandable. In fact it is one of very few (as far as I can see) unilateral changes from his reference text on taxonomy and nomenclature that Brazil has made in BoEA, and I would propose we do the same, and in our Annual Reports refer to it as "Chinese Bulbul (IOC: Light-vented Bulbul)", allowing AFCD etc etc to just continue calling it "Chinese Bulbul" in their own publications.
I've looked up and down the list a few times now and can't really see any problems on the scale of Chinese/Light-vented Bulbul, and think we should be grateful for that, make that one little change amd move on. I dare say I've missed something, and would be interested to hear from Geoff C what is going to happen with our non-goodsoni warblers of the group formerly referred to as "Blyth's Leaf Warbler", as they don't seem to feature on the list at the moment, presumably because it is neither proven nor certain that they are "Claudia's Leaf Warbler" Phylloscopus claudiae.
Mike Turnbull
[ Last edited by tmichael at 14/02/2010 23:59 ]
