Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 18:59:29 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norm Saunders Subject: More on Bird Orders MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marcus James' question piqued my curiosity as to just how much variability there has been in bird orders over the past 50 years or so. In the American Ornithologists Union Check-List of North American Birds, 5th ed., 1957, here is the content of the order Marcus asked about: Order Ciconiiformes Family Ardeidae -- Herons & Bitterns Family Ciconiidae -- Storks & Wood Ibises Family Threskiornithidae -- Ibises & Spoonbills Family Phoenicopteridae -- Flamingos In the 6th ed. of the Check-List, published in 1983, the Flamingos were put into a completely new order: Order Phoenicopteriformes which contained the one family, Phoenicoteridae, only. The other three families remained as in the 1957 version. In the 7th ed. of the Check-List, published in 1998, the three families left in Ciconiiformes were joined by the Family Cathartidae (New World Vultures) which had previously resided in the Order Falconiiformes. So...as taxonomic thinking evolves, families move out and in to orders and new orders are sometimes created. Overall though, the number and arrangement of bird orders has remained remarkably stable over the past 45 years. ============================ Norman C. Saunders Colesville, Montgomery County, MD marshhawk@att.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================