IDENTIFYING BIRDS: SPECIES 2000 - 2999

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Identifying birds requires appropriate sets of bird names and taxonomy. On this page we have listed the names of birds 2000 - 2999 as part of the complete of the  list of the names of birds of the world, which are here. For identifying birds, it is also important to have the names of birds in your native language. We have lists of the names of bird names in:

Besides this you can find the checklists birds of all countries of the world: Just go to http://www.birdlist.org/site/regions.htm. In many of them you can find the names of the birds in its native language as well. 

How many bird species?

We have composed our list of names of birds of what the University of California and WICE consider to be the complete list of names of birds of the world. You may find other lists of names of birds with different numbers.  Why is that? The answer is that there are several "species concepts" and those who adhere to one typically fight vigorously against those who adhere to another, and there is no real end in sight to the argument. In this issue there is no real right of wrong. After all, we're trying to fit millions of years of evolution into a series of nice, tidily organised list of names of birds, and the world is not now nor has it ever been nice or tidy. So, if you find a longer or shorter list elsewhere, those lists are just slightly different from our list of names of birds, but not better or worse. Moreover, some names have been changed, which of course complicates identifying birds. To facilitate identifying birds in the field, we have been rather conservative and have not yet followed the latest tendencies.

If you want to read a bit more about how taxonomists deal with species, you can read about some international initiatives which focus in biodiversity/taxonomic issues. Species 2000 and ITIS are now working closely together, with collaboration from GBIF and All Species Foundation, to accelerate the process of assembling a "Catalogue of Life", i.e. a database of all known organisms, with complete synonymies. Among them:

GBIF: http://www.gbif.org/  They recently hosted a taxonomic workshop in Sydney

Species 2000: www.sp2000.org.

ITIS: http://www.itis.usda.gov/

All Species Foundation www.all-species.org

Several conceptual discussions you may find at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

Another discussion is at: http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/crossbills/species.html