An Unofficial Checklist of the Birds of Japan

Fer-Jan de Vries


Preamble

On this page you find a checklist of the birds of Japan. It is still a work in progress. The list contains currently about 613 species. I have added as much information on subspecies as I could find in the literature.

I have tried to make this list of species and subspecies as complete and as up to date as possible, with help of the information I receive from Desmond Allen, Mark Brazil and Hiroshi Ikenaga. The list contains currently about 613 species.

The Official Checklist of the Birds of Japan is of course published by the Ornithological Society of Japan. The fifth and last edition is from 1974. In a letter to the Kantori Mailing List Mark Brazil has summarized the changes made in the pending sixth edition. The new has appeared, I will update accordingly in near future.

The onofficial Checklist of the Birds of Japan has been constructed from the species listed in [Brazil] and [Mc Whirter e.a.]. Subspecies as fas as mentioned in [Brazil] and [Mc Whirter e.a.] have been added. I have presented them using the order and the nomenclature of the world checklist of Monroe and Sibley. The japanese bird names follow the names as mentioned in [Brazil]. The names for species not occuring in there I have borrowed from the World Bird Index.

That I have choosen [Monroe and Sibley] as underlying taxonomy is simply that there happen to be available a concise online version by Rolf de By (of which this is still more concise local copy.)

References


Additions since November 1, 1997


The list is very fresh and nodoubtly still contains numerous errors. I welcome any comments on, additions to and corrections to the present list.

Fer-Jan de Vries,
Tsukuba, November 1, 1997.



Last modified: Sat May 23, 1998