BUBO Listing News
Any of the country or regional checklists used by BUBO Listing can now easily be downloaded in a CSV format suitable for reading in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for example. Just use the red download button on the right side (as shown below for the BOU British List).
You can even download just a family and not the entire list, by filtering on that first.
Downloading a taxa group is especially useful for Pan-species Listing lists, where the total PSL checklist is more than 75,000 species! Now it's easy to get a list of just the 8,000 or more Hymenoptera for example!
We've also simplified downloading your own lists, or targets, or indeed any other person's list. Just view the list (or targets, blockers, family list) and use the red (green on panspecieslisting.com) download button.
BUBO and PSL will be at the Global Birdfair next month! Visit us at the Pan-species Listing stand in the Kingfisher marquee to find out more about pan-species listing, and watch the cumulative Global Birdfair PSL list live on screen. If you are a BUBO Lister do pop in and introduce yourself! Read more about the PSL activities planned.
When you add a bird to your list it's interesting to know how significant it is. How many other people have recorded the species? Am I the first? BUBO Listing now tells you if your species is a good record, compared to other listers!
When you add a species to a list you may get a message depending how significant it is, based on how many other "similar" lists (of the same type, e.g. location, life/year, self-found) have already got the species on it. Messages aren't displayed if it is relatively "common" on other lists.
If you are entering several records via batch edit, don't worry as the message isn't obtrusive and you can ignore it and keep ticking away.
With pan-species listing, we also integrate with the NBN Atlas to tell you how significant your record is compared to nationally available records.
BUBO's Targets feature is a handy way to identify the species you've not seen that have been seen by the largest number of other birders. For those of us who are family listers, the data held within the BUBO database can also be used to identify our most glaring family gaps... and those families which are the trickiest.
The easiest five bird families to see are fairly predictable. Top of the list are the ducks, geese, and swans (Anatidae) followed by kites, hawks and eagles (Accipitridae), herons and bitterns (Ardeidae), pheasants and allies (Phasianidae) and pigeons and doves (Columbidae). These are all near-cosmopolitan families and even a short burst of birding anywhere in the world would likely result in at least one member of each of these families being seen. The fact that they're all non-passerine families indicates perhaps that there's a source of bias in the data, caused by listers creating a BUBO list and getting bored long before they enter everything they've seen. The first passerine family, the thrushes (Turdidae) comes in at number 17, and the next four are the finches and euphonias (Fringillidae), swallows and martins (Hirundinidae), starlings and rhabdornises (Sturnidae) and chats and Old World flycatchers (Muscicapidae). All again are widespread families containing many common species. In total, there are 54 out of the world's 252 extant bird families which at least 75% of BUBO listers have seen at least one member of.
What about monotypic families, those unique branches of the avian evolutionary tree which are always a major target on a world birding trip? Almost 80% of BUBO listers have seen an Osprey, not surprisingly given its near-worldwide range. Bearded Reedling has been seen by nearly 70% of listers, reflecting the fact that many of BUBO's members are based in Britain. Following a long way behind are Hamerkop (43% of listers), Wallcreeper (38%) and Limpkin (37%). Hoatzin, the most isolated monotypic family on the evolutionary tree, is way down in 174th place, seen by fewer than 19% of listers.
There are some major families which are a long way down the list. The tyrant flycatchers and hummingbirds are in 78th and 79th place, with only 60% of listers having seen members of these families. Antbirds are in 126th place with only 37% of listers having seen one, only just ahead of much less speciose Neotropical families such as cotingas, tinamous and jacamars.
Among the most difficult families to see, some of those monotypic families feature again: Kagu of New Caledonia, the Asian Przevalski's Finch and Sapayoa of South America have been seen by only around 2% of listers, and it's no surprise that four New Guinea families are among the ten least-seen. The “most difficult” though, is perhaps a surprise: the chat-tanagers of Hispaniola, seen by only a little over 1% of birders. Two other Hispaniolan families, Palmchat and Hispaniolan Palm-tanagers have also been seen by under 4% of listers, perhaps unexpected given how easily accessible these birds are in the Dominican Republic, an inexpensive destination to visit.
We have updated our world lists to align with the major 2023 eBird/Clements update, and the IOC 14.1 update. With 124 splits and 16 lumps from the former, lots of you will be gaining armchair ticks!
There are a few species that have been added but may not be highlighted as splits that you need to address (for reasons that aren't worth going into!). These include:
- Rufous-backed Dwarf Kingfisher
- Coconut and Biak Lorikeets
- Pale-legged, Pacific, and Caribbean Horneros
- Micronesian Rufous Fantail
- Siberian Nuthatch
- Eye-ringed Parrotbill
- Carmiol's and Yellow-lored Tanagers
If you have seen these then you should add them to your lists manually. (Same with Jamaican Petrel and Macquarie Parakeet, but both are probably extinct so unlikely to trouble anyone for updates!)
Some split species are likely to be incorrect on individual country or region lists: it is difficult to know every country that Yellow-billed or Medium Egret have occurred in for example! We have made a best guess, but do point out any errors you may find.