You are browsing the archives of splitting.

One of the items currently before the American Ornithologists’ Union’s North American Checklist Committee (NACC) is a proposal to split Old World and New World forms of the Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) into separate species. The AOU’s South American Checklist Committee (SACC) passed a very similar proposal last year, and the IOC followed suit shortly [...]

Year-end lists! Woo! What follows is my attempt to highlight 10 significant changes in world bird taxonomy proposed or formalized in 2010. As you might imagine, a full list of changes from all the world’s authorities would number in the hundreds, so choosing 10 was a somewhat arbitrary exercise, but I hope you’ll find this [...]