Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand 2022

[Oscar Thomas]

Colin Miskelly had an interview on Radio NZ today to promote the release of the all-new all-digital Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand, along with the awesome focus placed on Māori bird names:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programm ... bird-names

The checklist can be viewed here:
https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/society-publ ... checklist/

[SomesBirder]

I wasn't aware that the American / Hudsonian Whimbrel had been confirmed as having occurred in NZ!

[Steve Wood]

Thanks Colin for all your hard work on this project .
However I am a little surprised and disappointed to see that the Codfish Diving Petrel didn’t make the cut as a full species.
After so much hype, front page news etc and positive opinions from all the big guns - somewhat of a fizzer I think.

[Colin Miskelly]

Kia ora Steve

The Checklist Committee voting rules require either unanimous support or only one dissenting vote from the 6 committee members, and so anything that has changed from the previous Checklist had either 5 or 6 votes in support. And where an anticipated change hasn't occurred, there must have been at least 2 votes against.

Every committee member will have examples of where they were on the losing side of a discussion and vote - that is the reality of a Checklist by a committee rather than diktat.

Those Birds New Zealand members who signed up to the open offer of the Checklist mentor scheme were privy to this process, and will know that there were many hundreds of words of discussion behind every decision, and many well-reasoned arguments consigned to the scrap bin because at least 2 members voted against them.

Hopefully most people will find more positives than negatives in the end product, as those involved with the process did.

One of the challenges with whenuahouensis is that one of the paratypes (the unique specimen from Dundas Island in the Auckland Islands) was subsequently genotyped as P. georgicus 'sensu stricto' (i.e. the taxon recognised as the nominate subspecies of P. georgicus in the 5th edition Checklist). In addition to revealing the extent of overlap in morphological characters between the two taxa, this finding means that P. (g.). whenuahouensis must be listed as a junior synonym of P. (g.) georgicus, regardless of whether these taxa are considered separate species or subspecies (as the Dundas bird is a name-bearing type for whenuahouensis). The same paper that revealed this (Grosser et al. 2021) also showed that genetically, whenuahouensis is closer to georgicus (genetic distance 0.006) than most of the various subspecies of urinatrix are to each other (0.005 to 0.027). This information was not available when whenuahouensis was named as a full species in 2018.

Ngā mihi
Colin

[andrewcrossland]

Was the Lees valley (inland Canterbury) Koel omitted, or did I miss it? I remember it was a juvenile and difficult to ID as to provenance, but it should have bene easy enough to get some feathers DNA tested?

[Paul Sagar]

Andrew, see p.246 for an explanation

[SomesBirder]

Is Black Falcon not mentioned anywhere in this checklist (whereas the Pacific Gull is)?

[Colin Miskelly]

Kia ora SomesBirder

For black falcon, see p. 39 of Miskelly et al. (2022) Amendments to the 2010 Checklist of the birds of New Zealand:

https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/amendments-to-2010-checklist.pdf

"Falco subniger G.R. Gray Black Falcon
The sole record of this species in New Zealand (Gisborne, Nov. 1983) is no longer considered acceptable (Miskelly et al.
2015), therefore it is removed from the New Zealand list."

Ngā mihi
Colin

[Peter Frost]

Hi Colin,

For Nankeen Night Heron/Umu Kōtuku, the revised checklist says "two breeding colonies now established along the Whanganui River: Jerusalem, 1995 (Marsh & Lovei 1997), Kemps Pole, 2001 (Parrish & Lock 1997)." The first is correct, but Parrish & Lock (1997) -- the Classified Summarised Notes for the period 1 July 1995 to 30 June 1996 -- say nothing about birds breeding at Kemp's Pole. They only list the numbers and dates of three records of the species recorded there in 1995: 9 on 23/8, 8 on 30/8, 4 on 12/9. The numbers of Nankeen Night Herons at Kemp's Pole seem to build up in autumn/winter (as many as 18 have been recorded there on one occasion in some years ago) but then decline sharply in spring, when presumably the birds disperse to breed. So, numbers alone are not necessarily a sign of breeding (colonial or otherwise). Moreover, Parrish and Lock (1997) would have had to be strangely prescient to have anticipated breeding at Kemp's Pole in 2001. (I can't find any reference to Nankeen Night Heron in the CSNs covering 2001 either, or anywhere else for that matter, but I could have overlooked it.)

Although Nankeen Night Herons may well breed at or near Kemp's Pole, based on more recent observations of recently fledged young and an adult carrying nesting material there, breeding has not been proven, to the best of my knowledge. If sightings of recently fledged young are a criterion, then one could add Upokongaro and Pitangi to the list (but you probably don't want to do that as none of these have been formally published).

The advantage of an online checklist is that your committee should be able to revise this before it becomes conventional wisdom. It is great to have this important resource now available. Congratulations to you and the Checklist Committee for all the hard work that has gone into producing this revision.

Peter

[Colin Miskelly]

Thanks very much for this information Peter.

The passage referred to "two breeding colonies now established along the Whanganui River: Jerusalem, 1995 (Marsh & Lovei 1997), Kemps Pole, 2001 (Parrish & Lock 1997)" was left unaltered from the 2010 Checklist. While we managed to correct more than 300 errors from the 2010 Checklist, they were the hardest errors to detect without a huge amount of effort (i.e. checking thousands of original articles, rather than accepting the existing Checklist as being accurate).

The best way to find such errors is for the large pool of interested and knowledgeable ornithologists and birders (such as yourself) to let the Checklist Committee know whenever you notice anything wrong, including broken or incorrect hyperlinks in the online version.

Please report any and all apparent errors and omissions to: checklist[at]birdsnz.org.nz

This includes alternative names (English, Māori, or Moriori) that were left out of Appendix 3. Unless we are aware of an error or omission, we won't rectify it.

As explained at the New Zealand Bird Conference 2 days ago, we hope to move to a regime of biennial updates to the Checklist, alternating with Records Appraisal Committee reports (which are a major source of data for the Checklist). This would mean that the next Checklist revision would be published in 2024, which (hopefully) is a short enough turn around for you all to see value in letting us know what needs fixing - as you should see the results of your input within 2 years.

Ngā mihi nui
Colin