Our goal on behalf of the International Ornithologists’ Union, formerly International Ornithological Committee (IOC), is to facilitate worldwide communication in ornithology and conservation based on up-to-date taxonomy of world birds and recommended English names that follow explicit guidelines for spelling and construction.
To this end we provide a complete list of world bird species and their subspecies, including recently extinct ones. We update the list regularly to include newly described species, proposed and accepted splits and lumps, corrections of nomenclature, and changes of names or classification.
The IOC World Bird List (formerly IOC World Bird Names) provides species taxonomy for Wikipedia (French), Wikipedia Commons, and the Tree of Life project as well as many online databases and regional works worldwide.
The IOC World Bird List is a volunteer project with global participation by birders and professional ornithologists. We welcome your corrections and your suggestions for improvement of the IOC World Bird List. You can reach us at worldbirdnames@gmail.com.
Special thanks always to our panel of expert advisors (left panel), to Sally Conyne for compiling Ranges, to Eng-Li Green for website management, to Larry Master and Colin Campbell for photos, to Peter Kovalik for spreadsheet magic, and to all participants.
Frank Gill & David Donsker
International Ornithologists’ Union
This Website provides:
- HTML lists of 10,476 extant species and 149 extinct species of birds of the world (Version 3.3), with subspecies (20,992) and annotations.
- Spreadsheets in different formats, XML versions of the Master List, and Comparisons with other world lists.
- Classification of 40 Orders, 231 Families (plus 6 Incertae sedis), 2268 Genera
- Updates of new species and proposed splits, taxonomic revisions, and changes of names.
- Spelling guidelines for English bird names, including On hyphens and phylogeny (WJO 2009)
Suggested Citation:
Gill, F & D Donsker (Eds). 2013. IOC World Bird List (v 3.3). Available at http://www.worldbirdnames.org [Accessed "Date"].