new Checklist of the Birds of Wisconsin

I've been working on updating the Birds of Wisconsin checklist for the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology website for almost a year - the old one was outdated. Jesse Peterson (WSO's former president and current Membership Chair) has recently helped me with it, and it is now ready. Thanks to Jesse for his assistance with this process. Thanks also for suggestions and additional ideas to Bettie Harriman, Tom Schultz, and Jeff Baughman.

See the new checklist at: http://wsobirds.org/wischecklist.pdf

This checklist incorporates the most recent updates in nomenclature and sequence - it follows the most recent changes mandated by the American Ornithologists' Union's North American Classification Committee (NACC) for their Check-List of North American Birds. There are many changes to scientific names, many changes to the sequencing of species within the list, and one
family has been completely eliminated from the WI list. Thraupidae, which used to be the family containing the North American representatives of the tanagers, is gone from our WI list. The 3 species we see in WI (two are rare) are now classified in the Cardinalidae. The Thraupidae still exists, of course, but only those tanager species breeding in the tropics are included in that family now.


The position of the longspurs and Snow Bunting in the list has been moved (now placed in their own family, the Calcariidae), the genus name for the waterthrushes is different, as is the scientific name for Winter Wren (now split from the newly-named Pacific Wren of the west coast and Pacific Northwest), and many other changes will be noticeable as you look through the
list. Note the new common name for Whip-poor-will - it is now Eastern Whip-poor-will. This separates it from the recently-split Mexican Whip-poor-will.

Bill Mueller
Conservation Chair, Wisconsin Society for Ornithology