Birds of the World: Recommended English Names

I’m eager to get home and browse through the newly revised IOC Recommended English Names. This was an enormously fascinating–and fascinatingly enormous–project from the very beginning, and over the, what, two years now since the list’s appearance, I’ve found myself using it nearly every day, often in the form of the downloadable concordance of the IOC names and those used in the badly flawed sixth edition of Clements. This is an essential resource for all “world birders,” of course, but surprisingly helpful to the rest of us, too.

According to the announcement, the changes to this Version 1.7 include incorporation of the taxonomic shifts in the latest AOU Supplement and alteration of some 19 English species names (including the restoration of the time-honored “Long-tailed Tit,” olim Long-tailed Bushtit).