WELCOME TO WORLDBIRDNAMES.ORG

This site updates and virtually replaces
"BIRDS OF THE WORLD Recommended English Names"
By Frank Gill and Minturn Wright
Princeton University Press, 2006

Our Goal

Our goal on behalf of the International Ornithologists' Union, formerly International Ornithological Congress (IOC), is to facilitate worldwide communication in ornithology and conservation through the consistent use of English names linked to current species taxonomy. 

The IOC list provides English names for Wikipedia (English) and species taxonomy for Wikipedia (French), Wikipedia Commons, and the Tree of Life project as well as many online databases and regional works worldwide. 5000-6000 colleagues visit the site each month.

A "work-in-progress", the recommended English names follow explicit guidelines for spelling and construction. To this end we provide a complete list of the extant bird species of the world. We update the list regularly to include changes of names or classification, additions of newly described species as well as proposed splits and lumps, and taxonomic comments.

The IOC World List is a volunteer project with worldwide participation by birders and professional ornithologists. We invite all interested colleagues to help us keep the IOC list accurate, vital, and accessible. You can reach us at worldbirdnames@gmail.com. We welcome your participation, your corrections, and your suggestions for improvement of the IOC World List.

Note:  Country checklists of species on the IOC World List are now available on Mal Jenkins excellent website (http://printablebirdchecklists.homestead.com) as well as from Avibase (http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp)

Special thanks also to our panel of expert advisors (left panel), to Curtis Hawthorne, David Ringer and Eng-Li Green for website management, and to all active participants.

Frank Gill, David Donsker and the IOC team

This Website provides

  • HTML lists of 10,474 species of birds of the world (Version 2.11), with footnote annotations.
  • Classification of 40 Orders, 228 Families (plus 6 Incertae Sedis), 2227 Genera
  • Update summaries of new species and proposed splits, taxonomic revisions, and changes of names.
  • Downloadable files of Version 2.11
    • Excel file (XLS) - Life List format, including species ranges (1.3 Mb)
    • Excel file (XLS) - Master list including species Ranges and comments in computer format (1.7 Mb)
    • CSV version for database projects (789 Kb) [Note: This file is encoded as UTF-8 and will not open properly in Excel. If you plan to use Excel, please download one of the XLS files above.]
    • XML version for website and database projects  (4.8 Mb)
  • Sixth draft of Master List (v3.0f) with subspecies ranges (to Viduidae), and authors of the names [UPDATE>SUBSPECIES]
  • Multilingual Version of the IOC World Bird List 2.10, which Peter Kovalik compiled and makes available through this website. The list includes 15 languages in addition to English; sources are detailed on the second tab.
  • Draft 2 of species (and subspecies) that have become extinct since the mid-1600's; to be added to v3.0.
  • Comparison (v4.10) by Dave Sargeant and David Matson of the IOC list (Version 2.10) vs Clements (6.6e) - download Excel file.
  • Spelling guidelines for English bird names, including On hyphens and phylogeny (WJO 2009)

Suggested Citation

Gill, F and D Donsker (Eds). 2012. IOC World Bird Names (v 2.11). Available at http://www.worldbirdnames.org/ [Accessed "Date"].