A nod to the Philippines

Any prospect of a list appearing for the Philippines?

I did broach the topic sometime ago and you guys said that it was high on an agenda of lists to be incorporated.

Considering the country boasts one of the most diverse of avian endemism in the world, surely its national list deserves a place on this site. The archipelago is not as remote in the mindset for western birders as once was; is increasingly visited (I have personally been there on five occasions) and routinely covered by several wildlife tour companies these days.

Standing at just over 600 species (not much more than our BOU list incidentally), it should be less arduous to construct and maintain, than those for some other Asian countries, such as China, Indonesia or India, for example.

That all said, I appreciate the development of Bubo Listing is subject to its authors' unpaid input in their spare time.

Hi Jeremy

I did have a biased personal interest in getting the Philippines up on BUBO Listing since I was planning a trip there at the end of December. Unfortunately this trip is off (and I'll make do with wandering around Rajasthan and Gujarat instead) and this task has dropped down my priority list :blush:

I am aware of the WBCP list , which follows Howard & Moore and is described as a "preliminary" list, last updated in 2009. Do you know if there are more recent updates available? Taxonomic changes that both IOC and Clements have addressed in the last two years have a major impact on Asian birds and especially the Philippines, so the WBCP list is not ideal for tick-hunting listers!

Hello Mike,

As far as I know, the most contemporary standard list for the Philippines is the one the WBCP (Wild Bird Club of the Philippines) have constructed.

As you have pointed out, this has not been revised since 2009 and follows the nomenclature of Howard and Moore. Nevertheless, this list does include 26 additions since the publication of the Kennedy guide - foremost of these being Calayan Rail (new to science, 2004). It has also broadly adhered to a number of changes made by Clements and the IOC, with former super species such as Tarictic Hornbill being split into four and several forms of more widespread Asian birds, such as Reddish Cuckoo-Dove and Hodgson's Hawk-Cuckoo, to name but a few, being given endemic full species status for that country. Admittedly, a number of others, including the Bulbul complex, have yet to be addressed.

Surely though, as a leading authority for the classification and listing of the world's avifauna, Howard and Moore is no worse nor better then its rivals (a fourth edition is eagerly anticipated soon apparently). One would need to start somewhere with this and the current list drawn up by the WBCP, although not ideal, is a worthy foundation. As I stressed earlier, the sheer diversity of endemism in the Philippines makes it a list well worth promoting here.

I hope you can get to visit this engaging, yet ecologically precarious archipelago Mike - challenging and still highly rewarding for the world birder.

P.S. Wandering around Rajasthan and Gujarat seems an attractive plan B to me!

Jeremy Hurley wrote:

Surely though, as a leading authority for the classification and listing of the world's avifauna, Howard and Moore is no worse nor better then its rivals (a fourth edition is eagerly anticipated soon apparently).

Absolutely agree, and many would indeed consider it better than its rivals! Unfortunately for H&M, as IOC and Clements have been regularly updated, it's fallen behind in popularity stakes amongst birders. From maintaining a site such as BUBO Listing, and as most listers would probably agree, two World lists is ideally one too many

Anyway, back to Philippines. We'll look to get the WBCP list on board. The difficulty with it is that we try to maintain a mapping of taxonomies of each list, so that we know whether a Tarictic Hornbill on one authority is the same Tarictic Hornbill as another authority. Where a list is based on one of our two supported World lists, i.e. IOC and Clements, it makes it easier for us to do this, and easier to keep updated (e.g. taxonomically) in future. Being based on H&M it's more work for us to set it up, and a bit more work for users if copying one list to another. Not the end of the world though. I'm not likely to look at it within the next couple of weeks, but hopefully before the end of the year if I can keep my focus off Indian Bustards and Hypocolius!

The Philippines list is now available on BUBO Listing . This is using the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines list which was last updated in 2009 and so does not include various taxonomic changes that IOC and/or Clements have since made. We will endeavour to keep it up to date as and when WBCP update their list.