Home arrow Birds arrow Checklist
Checklist Print E-mail

The Christidis and Boles (2008) Checklist

There is always a feeling of anticipation in the birding world when any new checklist is released.  What changes will there be, and how will they affect me?  Changes to the list of birds affect different birders in different ways.  They generate endless debates among the scientists, who discuss the merit or otherwise of many of the alterations.  Twitchers avidly scour the new list to see which species have been split (providing an extra bird for their list) or relegated to being a subspecies (depriving them of a species).  Researchers and publishers have to rearrange their thinking to accommodate the new names and taxonomic sequence, throwing their lives into disarray.  And yet, for many birders these changes are little more than a nuisance, creating new names that we have to get used to (and many people simply ignore them, and use the old names anyway).  Importantly, changes to the checklist can also affect the well-being of the birds.  Threatened subspecies may be transformed, overnight, into threatened species, and attract extra funding and attention from researchers. 

Why do we need a new Checklist?

It is a fact of modern life that as technology advances rapidly, so does our power to investigate and understand the relationships of the animals and plants around us.  As Australia’s birdlife is so rich and diverse, it is a prime subject for investigation.  In earlier days, birds were usually classified into different families, genera and species on the characteristics that could easily be seen – the size or shape of the bill, the shape of the feet, the colour of the plumage, or even their nesting habits.  As science progressed, other more technical features were used to classify birds, such as the characteristics of the skeleton.  Today, scientists are able to analyse the DNA and other genetic characteristics of birds, and the results sometimes confirm the work of earlier researchers, but sometimes it throws up unexpected results, with seemingly unrelated birds, such as swifts and nightjars, actually being more closely related than previously thought.  It is this quest for needing to know more, needing to know what is correct that has driven Les Christidis and Walter Boles to investigate the relationships between Australia’s birds, compare their results with other published studies and compile an up-to-date Checklist to announce their findings.  Some people will applaud their conclusions, others will disagree with them, and most of us will just accept them.  

Birds Australia has adopted the Christidis and Boles (2008) list as its working Checklist.  Even though there will be a degree of debate surrounding some aspects of the new Checklist, especially regarding (in some cases) a perceived subjectivity or inconsistency, there is a real need for the birding world to adopt an agreed standard approach to the way we classify our birds; we need to speak a common language.  This is especially true for bird-monitoring projects, such as the Atlas of Australian Birds, where a standard list of species is crucial, and guidance for the participants is essential.  Most Australian birding organisations and their members have immediately adopted the revised taxonomy set out in Christidis and Boles (2008), so it is fitting that Birds Australia’s projects should also follow the new taxonomy.

As a service to our members, and other interested birders and researchers, a downloadable version of the Checklist is available below.  As a further service, there is also a link to a spreadsheet which indicates the changes from the previous Christidis and Boles (1994) Checklist, and also shows departures from the checklists compiled by Schodde & Mason (1997, 1999), BirdLife International, and Clayton et al. (2006).

Christidis and Boles (2008) Checklist (195kb)

Christidis and Boles Checklist Changes (180kb) & Understanding the Changes to the Checklist (140kb)

Birds Australia would like to acknowledge the authors, Dr. Les Christidis and Dr. Walter Boles, and CSIRO PUBLISHING for kindly granting us permission to publish this important Checklist on our website. For more information on this book or to obtain a copy please visit the CSIRO PUBLISHING website.