Hello and welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association.

I am your host, Nate Swick.

One of the biggest pieces of bird news, the last few years, came just about a month ago,

the announcement of Avalist, the long-anticipated fruit of the many-year

effort by taxonomists and ornithologists from around the world to reconcile the many

bird taxonomies in use and come up with something resembling a global bird taxonomy.

Like many birders and taxonomy enthusiasts, I've been watching this

process out of the corner of my eye for the last half decade, knowing all the while that the

results of this process would have ripples that would spread throughout the world's conservationists

and ornithologists and certainly the world's birding community.

It is a theme on this podcast to talk about how birding is one of the few avocations in the world

where the work of both professionals and amateur hobbyists influence each other in significant ways.

So of course, something that in another field would be, you know, crusty, old, dusty, irrelevant, absolutely is

not in the birding world. Splits and lumps and taxonomy, which represent, you know, very

cutting-edge science in a lot of cases, essentially creates the framework by which we go out

and look at birds. It influences what we focus on, what we seek out, what we call these things.

And if I'm going to be completely transactional about it, it influences the little number

on my e-bird checklist too, which is a small but noteworthy thing. I'll freely admit to being

something of a splitter in my personal preferences. You probably pick that up over the taxonomy

discussions that we've had over the taxonomy discussions

that we've had over the years. I like the phylogenetic species concept. I think more birds

is better than fewer birds. I like more identification challenges, bigger lists. I think a tree

...