Another IOC update and another two ticks lost

So the IOC have released update 14.2 and within it lies bad news for British listers. All Redpolls have been listed as one taxa so having previously lost the split of Arctic Redpoll which was considered two species, Couse's Arctic Redpoll (Acanthis hornemanni exilipes) and Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll (Acanthis hornemanni) and then lumped into one species of Arctic Redpoll following a new study led by The university of Colerado - Boulder the IOC have now lumped both Arctic Redpoll and indeed the Common or Mealy Redpoll (Acanthis Flammea) and Lesser Redpolls (Acanthis Caberet) and have opted for one species now which they call simply Redpoll (Acanthis Flammea)

The IOC update states that they will now treat all Redpoll taxa as one conspecific with the English name Redpoll. "following Chesser et al 2024 based on genomic homogeneity phenotypic variation, overlapping habitat, and lack of evidence of prolonged isolation (Mason and Taylor 2015 Funk et al 2021"

This basically means that despite the birds appearing different enough for birders to pick them out and identify the various types there isn't enough of a genetic difference to establish more than one species that overlaps habitat and shows differing plumage depending on that habitat or at least that's my take on the update. 

So having seen and listed all four sub species of Redpoll in the UK (when they were four species) I now find my list has gone backwards from 449 to 447 and I've now seen just one species of Redpoll in the UK.

That's the way the cookie crumbles and going forward a Redpoll is a Redpoll is Redpoll is a Redpoll.