Natural History Wanderings

I recently posted about the large number of new bird species: Over 400 New Bird Species! | Natural History Wanderings.

Lynx Edicíons and BirdLife International have published the first ever Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World that is the information source about the new species.  The Illustrated Checklist uses new criteria and recognised 462 new species which were previously treated as ‘races’ of other forms. The new total of 4,549 non-passerines implies that earlier classifications have undersold avian diversity at the species level by as much as 10%. Read more at: BirdLife and Lynx publish first ever illustrated world bird checklist | BirdLife.