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Order Or Chaos? Taxonomy and the British List Over the Last 100 Years

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Order Or Chaos? Taxonomy and the British List Over the Last 100 Years Order or chaos? Taxonomy and the British List over the last 100 years The debate over whether British Willow Tits Poecile montanus (above) and Marsh Tits P. palustris were separate species was one of the earliest taxonomic arguments in the new British Birds. Alan Harris Step back 100 years: Falcon. Since then, both Siberian Stonechat and Siberian Chiffchaff have also been added to the Although it had raised little interest at the time list as full species. of publication [in 1883], the most recent The next BOU checklist, due in a few years’ British Ornithologists’ Union checklist of time [it was published in 1915], will have British birds enumerated just 376 species. It increased to 423 species and will see most of included as full species Red-spotted and White- these pairs or groups lumped as single species. spotted Bluethroat, White-throated and Black- However,White and Pied Wagtail will remain as bellied Dipper, British and White-headed separate species, as will Yellow, Blue-headed Long-tailed Tit, British and Continental Coal and Black-headed Wagtail, Siberian Chiffchaff, Tit,White and Pied Wagtail,Yellow, Blue-headed Red Grouse and Yellow-legged Gull 1. and Grey-headed Wagtail, Two-barred and White-winged Crossbill, Northern and Amer- This is how it was when Harry Witherby ican Goshawk, and Gyr, Greenland and Iceland launched British Birds, in 1907. The most recent 1 Current scientific names of taxa mentioned (in order given for first time): Luscinia svecica svecica, L. s. cyanecula; Cinclus cinclus gularis/hibernicus, C. c. cinclus; Aegithalos caudatus rosaceus, A. c. caudatus; Periparus ater britan- nicus/hibernicus, P. a. ater; Motacilla alba alba, M. a. yarrelli; M. flava flavissima, M. f. flava, M. f. thunbergi; Loxia leucoptera bifasciata, L. l. leucoptera; Accipiter gentilis gentilis, A. g. atricapillus; Falco rusticolus; Saxicola torquatus maurus; Phylloscopus collybita tristis; M. f. feldegg; Lagopus lagopus scotica; Larus michahellis. © British Birds 100 • October 2007 • 609–623 609 Order or chaos? Taxonomy and the British List 27: 224 37, plate 7 Brit. Birds Brit. Birds ; first published in ; first published in Messers Elliot & Fry © John Armitage 274. Harry Forbes Witherby (1873–1943). 275. Ernst J. O. Hartert (1859–1933). Born in A well-travelled ornithologist and publisher,Witherby Germany, Hartert carried out fieldwork in many (shown here in Corsica in 1937) was well placed to countries in Africa, southern and Southeast Asia, start British Birds, and then edit it for over 35 years. the Neotropics and Europe. He was Director of the Witherby also started one of the first two bird- Zoological Museum at Tring,Hertfordshire, from ringing schemes in Britain, both of which began in 1892 to 1930. Because of the research he undertook 1909, and helped to sustain the fledgling British Trust there on Rothschild’s immense collection, it was said for Ornithology, partly through the proceeds of the that he ‘knew more birds of the world probably than sale of his important bird collection to the British any other ornithologist’. Museum (Natural History). BOU checklist (the first ever) had appeared 24 fronts and this was reflected in the pages of BB, years earlier, in 1883 (BOU 1883); it was revised as well as in the longer-established Bulletin of in 1915 (BOU 1915). At the time, there was the British Ornithologists’ Club and Ibis. The last neither a BOU taxonomic committee, nor a list two publications were dominated by the committee. It was Howard Saunders who main- ornithological ‘establishment’ of the time, tained the closest thing to an official record, including greats such as Frederick DuCane having prepared several revisions and derivative Godman, Henry Eeles Dresser, the Sclaters editions of Yarrell’s History of British Birds (father and son Philip Lutley and William (Newton & Saunders 1871–85; Saunders 1889, Lutley) and Richard Bowdler Sharpe. Most had 1899; table 1). Such was the interest in the interests in bird distribution and taxonomy on British List even then that the first few pages of a wider scale than Britain & Ireland, though the the first issue of BB contained an update by Bulletin and Ibis frequently published details of Saunders in his Additions to the List of British species new to Britain, and their earthly remains Birds since 1899 (Saunders 1907) 2. were often exhibited at BOC dinners. Official checklists were, and still are, the Witherby brought new ornithological hori- means by which some order may be brought to zons to the rapidly increasing number of people the confusion arising from scattered and often interested in birds. From the earliest days of BB, conflicting new information on taxonomy and he attracted support from the likes of Saunders, nomenclature, as well as status and distribution. Norman F. Ticehurst and Ernst Hartert, a brilliant The period from the turn of the nineteenth into taxonomist who was the Director of Walter the early twentieth century was busy on both Rothschild’s private museum at Tring. Hartert 2 Ireland’s avifauna is referred to and included in many of the lists and publications mentioned throughout this paper, and the British and Irish lists were treated together for many years. However, the lists are now separate and this paper focuses on Britain alone. 610 British Birds 100 • October 2007 • 609–623 Order or chaos? Taxonomy and the British List Table 1. The pedigree of the British List. The British List maintained by the BOU has appeared in seven editions since 1883.The most influential publications leading up to the present edition are listed below. The ‘Records & status’ column relates primarily to rare and scarce birds. Since 1918, information on rare birds has come primarily from the reports of the various BOU list/records committees and, since 1958, from the annual reports of the British Birds Rarities Committee (Dean 2007). Scarce species are treated in the companion reports also published in BB (e.g. Fraser & Rogers 2006). Edition of the British List Records & status of individual species List sequence 4 Yarrell 1837–43. History. 1st edn. Yarrell 1845. History. 2nd edn. Yarrell 1856. History. 3rd edn. Newton & Saunders 1871–85. Yarrell’s History. 4th edn. Sclater 1880 BOU 1883. A List of British Birds. Saunders 1889. Illustrated Manual 1. 1st edn. Saunders 1899. Illustrated Manual. 2nd edn. Sharpe 1899–1909 Harting 1901. Handbook 2. 2nd edn. Saunders 1907. Additions to the List since 1899. Brit. Birds 1: 4–16. Hartert et al. 1912. Hand-list. BOU 1915. A List of British Birds. Witherby 1919–24. Practical Handbook. BOU 1923a. A List of British Birds. Saunders & Clarke 1927. Manual 3. [3rd edn. of Saunders 1889.] Witherby et al. 1938–41. Handbook. Wetmore 1940 BOU 1952. Check-list of the Birds Peters 1931–1970 of Great Britain and Ireland. (= Wetmore) Nicholson & Ferguson-Lees 1962. The Hastings Rarities. Brit. Birds 55: 299–384. BOU 1971. The Status of Birds in Britain and Ireland. Voous 1977 BOU 1992. Checklist of Birds of Britain and Ireland. 6th edn. BOU 2006. The British List: a checklist of birds of Britain (7th edn.).Ibis148: 526–563. 1 A revised abridgement of Newton & Saunders (1871–85). 2 Not part of the direct lineage of the records, but contains a useful inventory of rare birds. 3 The direct lineage runs from Witherby’s Practical Handbook to the Handbook, and this final descendant of Yarrell was less important than earlier editions. 4 The sequence of the British List was based on these publications, the earlier editions incorporating unexplained variations. was one of the leading professional ornithologists The coming of subspecies of his time and his involvement might seem a The early years of BB witnessed an intellectual little surprising. Unlike some of his contempo- struggle with the BOU over the use of sub- raries, however, he (and indeed Rothschild) took species. The collecting of birds from across large an interest in the less esoteric side of ornithology, areas of North America through the mid and writing, among other things, detailed accounts of late 1800s had led Spencer Fullerton Baird, Joel the birds of Buckinghamshire and the Tring A. Allen and others to recognise that species reservoirs (Hartert & Rothschild 1905; Hartert & were neither fixed nor narrowly defined. In Jourdain 1920). Hartert was also embroiled in a many widespread species there was much geo- major, long-running battle with the British estab- graphical variation. They realised that, although lishment (see below), including his old friend these varieties were best regarded as being the Sharpe at the British Museum. In Witherby he same species, a suitable way of representing found an ally. variation would be to give them subspecies British Birds 100 • October 2007 • 609–623 611 Order or chaos? Taxonomy and the British List a broad research programme into subspecies. In 1884, perhaps in response to the BOU’s unprogres- sive checklist, Coues came to England from the US to try and raise interest in subspecies and tri- nomial nomenclature. He addressed Britain’s leading zoologists in London but failed spectacularly to convince them that the idea had any merit (Stresemann 1975, p. 250). The British ornithological establish- ment, with the notable exception of Henry Seebohm, closed ranks against the use of subspecies, which they regarded as unnecessary, or even ‘destructive’ to the well-estab- lished systems in use at the time. Seebohm was very much in favour of subspecies, having recently declared his wish that ‘the rising generation of ornithologists would have the courage to throw the bino- mial system to the dogs’. He had not long returned from his explorations to the Pechora and Yenisey, where he had learnt first-hand about geo- Kit Day graphical variation in Palearctic 276. British Dunnock Prunella modularis occidentalis, Suffolk, March 2007.
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