Many thanks to Senior Leader Jon Dunn, a member of the AOU’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature, for the news that the 49th Supplement to the AOU Check-list has appeared, and with it some changes in the names and the status of birds familiar and exotic alike.

The entire text is available on the Committee’s web page, and all the changes have been incorporated into the pdf list e-published by the AOU. Here are a few highlights of interest to North American and world birders:

Spot-billed Duck has been split, with Eastern Spot-billed Duck the species that has occurred casually in Alaska. American Flamingo has been split from the Greater Flamingo of the Old World.

Parkinson’s Petrel and Loggerhead Kingbird join the list of species recorded from the US and Canada. Swallow-tailed Gull, Pallas’s Leaf-Warbler, and Song Thrush have been added to the list from California, Alaska, and Quebec, respectively; a full and illustrated account of the discovery of the leaf-warbler, the most charismatic of all the Phylloscopus, was published in 2007 in North American Birds by Senior Leaders Paul Lehman and Gary Rosenberg.

Mangrove Black-Hawk is once again considered a subspecies, subtilis, of Common Black-Hawk.

A number of gull species have new genus names, while the English names of several Turdus are changed from “robin” to “thrush”–among them the Clay-colored Thrush of south Texas.

As always, there’s a lot more to ponder in the complete text of the Supplement, so find a comfortable chair and enjoy!