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Index of Subjects <html><div style='background-color:'><DIV class=RTE> <P>Hello Patrick and other listers,</P> <P> Ah, the joys of listing! Although you can, of course, keep lists of anything you wish, including subspecies, most birders keep lists of species only, as that is what is used in reports to the <EM>ABA Listing Supplement</EM> or the <EM>Canadian Listers' Corner</EM>. In other words, if you want to play the game, and compare your results with those of other birders around the country or the world, the species is the unit to use. </P> <P> For the Swallow or Barn Swallow, that means just one "tick" for each list that you have it in, since they are the same species, <EM>Hirundo rustica</EM>, although, as with many others, several of the subspecies are quite distinctive. There have been proposals to accept lists of "identifiable forms", but these have never gained general acceptance, partly because of the difficulty of deciding what forms might be acceptable. Species are difficult enough to determine, with the criteria for separating them having changed over the years, but at least there are committees of ornithologists who review the evidence and decide on any proposals to split or lump species. If at some point in future, they determine that <EM>H. r. rustica </EM>and <EM>H. r. erythrogaster </EM>(the red-bellied one that we have) are separate species, you just have to go back to your field notes and see if you have enough details to definitely say that you have seen both.</P> <P> English names of birds, like those of other organisms, are not standardized around the world, so it is always best to use the international [=scientific] names, but that is also a matter of preference or of the type of check-list you use for keeping your list. You will find that the English often use what we consider a gereric name such as swallow or wren to refer to a species (our Barn Swallow and Winter Wren in these cases). There have been efforts ongoing for years to standardize English names around the world, as was done a few years ago for French names, but with little success; I am not enthusiastic about this, as it would provide one more excuse for birders not to bother learning the international names.<BR><BR>Cheers,</P> <P>Wayne Neily </P></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>Tremont, Nova Scotia </P>"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty," - John Keats, 1820. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>----Original Message Follows---- </P> <DIV></DIV>From: Patrick Kelly <PATRICK.KELLY@DAL.CA> <DIV></DIV>Reply-To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca <DIV></DIV>To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca <DIV></DIV>Subject: [NatureNS] Life list question <DIV></DIV>Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 15:21:04 -0300 <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>Hello everyone: </P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>I have started making up a list of the new birds that I saw while on vacation in Ireland. Two of the books that I purchased and took with me were "The Compelete Guide to Ireland's Birds" by Dempsey and O'Cleary and Collins "The Most Complete Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe" by Mullarney, Zetterstrom, Svensson, and Grant. The first book is rather interesting as all of their common birds are our vagrants, and vice versa! <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>Now that I am home, I am matching up my pictures (and notes for birds for which I did not get a picture) and was quite surprised with one of the first birds I saw, the swallow. The Irish bird book identifies it simply as "swallow". The Collins book calls them "barn swallows". I was trying to determine how to put this on my list (I would have thought that ours would be called "American barn swallow" so I decided to look up "our" barn swallow in my Peterson, and both birds are the same Hirundo rustica. That is despite the fact that ours have an orangish face, no band across the breast and a yellowish-orange breast while the ones in Europe have a red face, black bib, and a white breast. </P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>Collins does illustrate two subspecies of the barn swallow: transitiva and savignii (the former being in the eastern Mediterranean and being reddish-buff below; the latter being found in Egypt and being deep rusty-red below. They do not mention our version at all, not even in the accidental section. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>For those of you who keep lists, if you have seen both birds how have you recorded them? </P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <P>Pat </P> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>======================================================================== == <DIV></DIV>Patrick Kelly <DIV></DIV>Director of Computer Facilities <DIV></DIV>======================================================================== == <DIV></DIV>Faculty of Architecture and Planning <DIV></DIV>Dalhousie University <DIV></DIV>======================================================================== == <DIV></DIV>PO Box 1000 Stn Central 5410 Spring Garden Road <DIV></DIV>Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 2X4 Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 2X4 <DIV></DIV>Canada Canada <DIV></DIV>======================================================================== == <DIV></DIV>Phone:(902) 494-3294 FAX:(902) 423-6672 E-mail:patrick.kelly@dal.ca <DIV></DIV>======================================================================== == <DIV></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Get