Recently, most of the influential list-keepers of the world’s birds, got together and, between them, created a definitive, universal, taxonomic list of the birds of the world and they called it Avilist – The Global Avian Checklist. This may come as good news to those who like things neat and tidy, but others will find that they will be gaining and losing some species, the latter much to their chagrin. But how does it affect Waders?
Well, for a start it helps us with our struggles to define waders. Hitherto, we have tried to stick to scientific norms, meaning that waders were to be all those species in the sub-orders Charadrii and Scolopaci within the order Charadriifomes. Then things got complicated. The powers that be decided that the family Turnicidae (Buttonquails) were in Scolopaci. Buttonquails are clearly not waders, but we needed to include them according to our own rules. Then it was decided that the Glareolidae (Pratincoles and Coursers) and Dromadidae (Crab Plover) were now in the sub order within Charadriiformes not considered waders, i.e. Lari. These two families are traditionally thought of as waders, and, although we stuck to the rules officially, we never really thought of them as anything but waders. So it was complicated.
In this new shake-up, they have, for now at least, stuck to the ‘classic Linnaean ranks of order, family, genus, and species’ plus of course subspecies, so no suborders to complicate matters. We can now, therefore, forget about the suborders and simply name the families we think of as waders and, hey presto, we are back to square one!
So how many waders are there now? Well, we make it 235 species in the families included in the Hayman, Marchant and Prater’s seminal work; Shorebirds, plus the Pedionomidae (Plains-wanderer) and the Chionidae (Sheathbills), which they didn’t include, but we do.
In the new order of things some species that we have counted have now officially reverted to subspecies;
- White-backed Stilt Himantopus melanurus is back as a subspecies of Mexican Stilt as Himantopus mexicanus melanurus.
- Black-shouldered Lapwing Vanellus novaehollandiae is back as a subspecies of Masked Lapwing as Vanellus miles novaehollandiae.
- Northern Red-breasted Plover Anarhynchus aquilonius is lumped back with the Southern Red-breasted Plover as Anarhynchus obscurus aquilonius and the species’ English name reverts to New Zealand Dotterel.
The genus Thinornis has be resurrected and the following species included in it;
- Hooded Plover becomes T. cucullatus.
- Shore Plover becomes T. novaeseelandiae.
- Black-fronted Dotterel becomes T. melanops.
- Forbes’ Plover becomes T. forbesi.
- Three-banded Plover becomes T. tricollaris.
- Long-billed Plover T. placidus.
- Little Ringed Plover T. dubius.
It can be expected that the situation will change over time, but it is to be welcomed, we think, that there is now a single world taxonomy of birds, so we neither have to ask, nor explain, which authority is being adhered to. We will be amending the website to reflect this over the next few weeks.