The New A.O.U. Checklist and Nebraska Birds

Copyright 1982, Nebraska Ornithologists' Union. Used by permission.

Abstract

The Sixth Edition of The A. O. U. Checklist of North American Birds will be published in 1983. The Fifth Edition was published in 1957, and the last changes in it were by the 33rdSupplement, issued in 1976. The scientific and common names of the birds to be listed in the Sixth Edition, in the order to be used in that edition, are given in a 34th Supplement, published July 1982 as a supplement to The Auk, Vol. 99, No.3. But that supplement, unlike previous ones, contains no explanations or comments. Stuart Keith, Birding XIV (2):40, who in working on the second edition of the A.B.A. Checklist had contact with members of the AOU committee, does give some explanations of name changes, but there is still a lot left to conjecture. And, at least at first, the changes in the order may be more confusing than the changes in the names. In the list below the right-hand column gives the page number on which the species appears in Johnsgard's A Preliminary List of the Birds of Nebraska and Adjacent Plains States. These numbers will not be much help on slight changes, such as in the order of Loons, but not much help is needed there; they may be helpful in the greater shifts, such as that of House Sparrow to the end of the Nebraska list. Mr. Clyde Johnson was helpful in providing information; Dr. Paul A Johnsgard, Dr. Ross Silcock, Dr. Roger Sharpe, and Gary Lingle made comments on some of the conjectures, but the responsibility for conjectures is strictly the writer's.