AOU 52nd Supplement

Although this is mostly a birding issue, I like to tag my photos with scientific names and common names. In this "splitting" climate for the records committees it can be quite consuming to keep up with things.

Witness the contents of the AOU 52nd supplement, readable at http://www.aou.org/auk/content/128/3/0600-0613.pdf .

Modest changes are:
Split Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata) from Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)
Split Snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus) from Kentish/Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus)
Internal split in Mexican Jay makes it become (Aphelocoma wollweberi)

But the greatest mayhem is in the New World Warblers, where DNA evidence has led to a widespread rearrangement of the genera. While this is pretty much justified some people are going to have a hard time with the disappearance of Dendroica, for example, which turns into Setophaga. Hooded Warbler leaves Wilsonia and heads into Setophaga, Ovenbird breaks from the Waterthrushes (which become Parkesia) etc etc etc. That should only take a few tens of hours to sort out.....