I've been a LONGGG-time user of Birder's Diary for many years... and I really love it... however, I am finally at the point of my LIFELIST that I no longer can accept the CLEMENTS taxonomy... it's just not up-to-date on a world basis anymore... and it's so sad.

I am deciding that I need to move my LIFELIST to the IOC v2.2, but as best as I can tell... BD does not offer this taxonomy. That's really sad for me and I am not sure what I am going to do... as I would hate to leave Birder's Diary...

I even have Birder's Diary listed on the LINKS page of my website for years, along with my Birder's Diary-created LIFELISTS available for all to see how cool Birder's Diary is.

Are there realistic plans that IOC list will be supported by BD in the (near) future?

Thanks Jeff... for a GREAT  program.

best

Dave

  http://www.birdingpix.com/

Hi Dave,

Thanks for bringing this up and thanks for all the kudos and your lifelong devotion to BD!

I think I am confused on this matter however. I thought the IOC was simply a standard for English names for all birds of the world - not a true taxonomy. And in that sense, I can't imagine that any world-based taxonomy has any more support and backing (Cornell Univ) and completeness on a world-wide basis than Cornell's Clements taxonomy. I may be wrong on this and please let me know where I am.

I know that SteveO posted a year or so ago asking if anyone was interested in the IOC. It did not generate much response. Steve will probably have more to add on this.

Let's start here...

Jeff

Well, IOC is becoming more of a taxonomy, having left their original charter behind.

I follow it and the updates to it - and heve sent in some corrections and notes.

I expect to get to it within the next few months. I just finished updating ABA, AOU and SACC, and need to send them to Jeff by this weekend.

I am one of the reviewers for the new Clements (due out a month ago) and will update 6.3.2 when it is released.

And I want to get a couple reporting enhancements into 3.7.

After that, maybe IOC - but it really does depend on demand.

Hey - anyone else out there really hungry for IOC?

(And I would like to take a try at Taxonomy in Flux - but the update frequency?)

"Taxonomy in Flux"??

What is that Steve?

Jeff

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the details on what you feel to be the shortcomings currently in Clements. Let me make sure I understand those that you mention, and just update me when you get a chance. This will help me understand what might need to change in BD in order to provide more needed functionality.

As for the Royal Albatross, Clements has both the southern (D. epomophora epomophora) and northern (D. e. sanfordi) in the tax list - Clements just considers them, and therefore classifies them, as subspecies. You can certainly record your sightings of each against the subspecies. Of course, when using Clements to generate your life count, then each of these sightings only count as 'one species seen'. Is that what is causing you the most angst? You can certainly modify the tax list and elevate each to species status. But, the only effect this would have is that of elevating your life count by one. It wouldn't change your sightings whether you did this or whether you had the IOC tax list in BD.

Now - also, I not sure I understand the impact of what you mean by '...I am having to keep a separate record of common names and scientific names, etc, which I have seen, yet unable to capture into BD...'. I don't understand why this is the case. Can you give an example please? As above in the albatross example, you can record your sightings of those things - Clements just considers them to be subspecies - but you can still record sightings against them and so on as with any thing in BD.

Let me know when you get a chance please,

Jeff

I just want to clarify one point - even though no one asked.

Creating a taxonomy list is fairly easy - BD is set up to do it.

The problem is the research. In order to make sightings flow from one tax list to another, each entry in a list must point to the corect taxon (Jeff likes to call them "things").

In your example, the taxa for the Southern and Northern Royal Albatross are already recognized in Clements - just not with the correct names and not as full species. As a result, the IOC checklist entries for those species need to point to the same underlying taxa, so if anyone has ticked them in Clements they will get credit when using the IOC list.

I have seen Tax lists where any taxon with an new name was added as a new entry - so sighting were not reported on different tax lsists. I have made a couple of those mistakes, and I have learned to do the research.

I took a look at IOC today, and spent a few minutes matching on Common and binomial names. There are a little over 700 entries where a diirect match to Clements (the most complete and up-to-date list we currently support) is not possible. The good news is that is less than ten percent of the entries.

The bad news is that resolving the 700 will take some time.  Some will be easy, but a few will take more effort to resolve.

You are one brave soul!

But many folks are thanking you ahead of time.

Jeff