Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

For the listing birder, this is one of the most exciting times of the year.

“What?”, I can hear you saying. “The birding sucks in mid July”, you may cry. To which I say, yeah, it pretty much does, but you have as good a chance of getting a life bird right now, sitting at home on your computer, as you might in the middle of a spring warbler rush. Maybe the AOU knows this. Maybe that’s why they release the updates to the official North American list in mid-summer instead of May or September or even January. We’d be too busy actually birding to appreciate it, we need time to let these changes sink in. And friend, we got some sinking to do this time.

David at Search and Serendipity has the scoop, not to mention the AOU membership, to get said scoop ahead of everyone else, but by the time this post goes up most of this stuff will be common knowledge in the bird community. Nevertheless, David is moderating some interesting discussion at his blog anyway.

As for how it affects birders in North America, you can put away your checklists, there are no splits in our collective neck of the woods. The one with the best shot of success, the excision of four separate species from the bird formally known as Savannah Sparrow (none of which, incidentally, were Ipswich Sparrow, the only subspecies I’ve seen), failed, as did the less known proposed split of Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl.

But we are not without impact. First of all our Finches, so long having found a home with finches around the world in the genus Carduelis, are now no longer congeneric. Redpolls are newly Acanthis and Siskins and Goldfinches also find themselves in the new genus Spinus. The changes are largely academic, the birds won’t be moving around in the book or anything, but I have to say I find the Pine Siskin, newly Spinus pinus, a lot more fun.

Moving backwards, the Sharp-tailed Sparrows in genus Ammodramus will be losing their posterior patronym, becoming just Saltmarsh Sparrow and Nelson’s Sparrow. I admit to mostly liking this change, even if I’ll have to make the distinction between Savannah Sparrow and Saltmarsh Sparrow more clear in my notes (there can’t be two SASPs, after all). Fortunately, I don’t see that many Saltmarsh Sparrows anyway(though that really seems rather unfortunate). Though I will miss the distinctiveness of the descriptor “Sharp-tailed”.

No, the big change that will no doubt have birders talking is the rearrangement of the North American tanagers, which now appear to actually be fancy grosbeaks, and the Saltators, which were grosbeaks that now appear to be fancy tanagers. it makes sense when you think about it. Neotropical tanagers were superficially similar but in many ways really different than their north American “cousins”, in that they largely lack the dramatic sexual dimorphism and the elaborate songs, both traits the new Piranga Cardinalids share with their new relatives (new to our perspective anyway, I suspect they always knew). Even though the Pirangas are no longer “tanagers’, they’ll still be Tanagers, if that makes sense. Having Scarlet Pirangas in my woods every spring would be cool, but it’s probably a good decision by the AOU to let sleeping common names lie.

So while there’s no potential for new species for the ABA lister this year, it sounds like it was a fun-filled session. Something to keep us busy until the shorebirds start returning, anyway. Which should be just about……….. now.