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No more Rock Doves!



The AOU has just published its annual supplement to the AOU Check-list
of North American birds, the official standard for bird names and
classification in North America.

This time there are no splits or lumps of species within the ABA area,
although American Three-toed Woodpecker is split as a separate species
from Eurasian, and Snowy Owl loses its own genus and is lumped in the
same genus (Bubo) as Great Horned. There are a few other changes in
scientific names (e.g Screech-Owls are now in genus Megascops instead of
Otus). There are also some confusing remarks about changes in the
sequence of species, which are apparently going to be published only on
the web site http://www.aou.org/aou/birdlist.html although the web site has not yet been updated with this year's supplement. I think more messing with the sequence is too bad, as too many bird lists (such as the CBC field checklist) still aren't even up to date with the last few rounds of changes in sequence. (The state lists on the CBC web site are current however.)


But most notably, at least to me, is that the Rock Dove has been renamed
Rock Pigeon! I am not making this up. It might have been simpler if
they had just renamed it "Pigeon". This change is to be in conformance with a change the British Ornithologists' Union made over 10 years ago. It is their pigeon, after all. I don't think that I have ever heard of that decision before, though.


Not (yet) a Carolina bird, but the one other change in common name is that Band-tailed Gull is renamed Belcher's Gull, a name that I think is already in use in some books.

--
Kent Fiala
Chapel Hill Township, NC