The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World

This sixth edition of Clements, as it is universally known, comes seven years after the last and is thus the first since the author’s death in 2005. The challenge of maintaining the most frequently updated world list of birds and, in North America at least, the most widely used, has been taken up by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the first tweak visible on the glossy new dustjacket is a subtle title change to The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World. Aside from this and the introductory tributes honouring Jim’s massive contribution to the field, however, it feels and reads much like the last edition.

It has, of course, been brought fully up to date, so all of the many hundreds of online amendments published since 2000 at www.ibispub.com/updates.html have been incorporated. The system of internet updates will continue, but owners of this new edition will now need to bookmark www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/updates in their browsers – the first update is due to be posted online on 30 September 2007.

Clements is, for good reason, the official world checklist of both this magazine and the American Birding Association, and is arguably the most widely endorsed checklist of its kind. For years it was the only tome to summarise all avian species (9,930 of them in this latest edition) along with their subspecies and distribution, though more recently it has faced stiff competition from the third edition of Howard and Moore’s scholarly Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (2003). However, with Clements adopted as the de facto world listing bible, and with its successful system of online amendments keeping it constantly updated, it is hard to see it being toppled from the number one spot.

Whether you want to maintain your own world list or be able to access an authoritative reference to all of the world’s birds, the new Clements is an essential acquisition.

• The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World by James F Clements (Christopher Helm, London, 2007).

• Sixth edition, 864 pages.

• ISBN 9780713686951. Hbk, £45.

Available from Birdwatch bookshop

First published in Birdwatch 183:59 (September 2007)