Prepared by the Singapore Bird Records Committee
The latest update of our checklist, version 2023-1, has been published. It can be accessed at our Downloads page.
Since our last checklist update in August 2022, the Records Committee has considered and voted on over 180 records of rare and scarce birds in Singapore. We would like to thank all the observers who submitted their records, and these votes are published on our Recent Decisions page with our Live Checklist tracking additions and deletions to the checklist on a live basis.
Our “Rarities List” was renamed, as the term Review List more effectively encompasses the full list of species that we track records for; several species on our Review List might not fit the description of ‘rare’. For more information on the workings of the Records Committee, please refer to our simplified operating guidelines which have been published on our About page.
Over 500 historical records have also been compiled by our team and added since August, and nearly all species on our Review List now have records compiled in our database.Â
This article includes the updates to our checklist since our last revision. Our checklist is based on the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) taxonomy, the latest version being IOC 13.1 – released this month. The checklist also contains national conservation statuses from the newly-released Red Data Book 3.
This edition of the checklist is version 2023-1, and can be downloaded at our Downloads page. Note that this downloadable checklist is a “snapshot” of the checklist as of February 2023, and may differ from our live checklists available on this site and our Records Committee site. For example, you may have noticed the below additions to the checklist already appearing on our live checklists by late last year – when they were finalised by our Records Committee – even though they are only reflected in our downloadable checklist in this official update.
There are now 428 species in the Singapore Bird Checklist with the changes in this revision.
Added to checklist
Black-headed Ibis Threskiornis melanocephalus [Record 10358]: One bird at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in early Nov 2022 placed this species in Category A. Our recent article discusses the committee’s rationale for unanimously accepting this record as a wild bird.
Brown-breasted Flycatcher Muscicapa muttui [Record 10347]: A single record at Dairy Farm Nature Park on 30th October.
Removed from checklist
Buff-vented Bulbul Iole crypta is removed from the checklist as the last accepted record was in Oct 1992, exceeding the 30-year cutoff for native birds to be included in Category A. Subsequent records after 1992 have not been accepted.
Other minor changes
Barred Eagle Owl moves from Bubo to Ketupa, so its scientific name goes from Bubo sumatranus to Ketupa sumatrana.
