I see you don't have a listing for the Norfolk Island Green Parrot (Cyanoramphus cookii) the only listing is for the New Zealand Red-crowned Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) which looks similar but is a different species. Can you comment and perhaps address this anomaly.

Hello Keith

In the Working List of Australian Birds used by Birdlife (and Birdlife Photography), the name Red-fronted Parakeet is used.

When moving from version 1 to version 2 of the Working List the Red-fronted Parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) and the Tasman Parakeet (Cyanoramphus cookii) were lumped into a single species Red-fronted (novaezelandiae).

The naming Green Parrot is still used in some sources eg the Australian Bird Guide by Peter Menkhorst et al.

You can find our taxonomy under Resources / Taxonomy on the website.

Regards
Simon

OK but I doubt if the World Parrot Trust have it wrong and is Birdlife going to tell Norfolk Island they have one less endemic.

Your doubts might prove to be reality. BirdLife conducts and supports considerable research as well as condensing and analysing other science on Australian birds and I think is the first point of call when questions like this arise. After all, they are on the ground in Australia, have a very strong interest in our avifauna and its protection and probably put a lot more time and resources in than an international body that has to spread its resources worldwide. However, I'm no authority on this either so treat my comments accordingly

Following on from this question I looked at various bird related sites, and it seems there is ongoing discussion about the classification of this species, and whether or not to include the parakeets from Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, New Zealand, Chatham Island, Macquarie Island (extinct) and various other islands as separate species or as subspecies of Cyanoramphus. Regardless, the Norfolk Island 'version' is still a unique endemic, whether classified as a separate species or subspecies.

The working list of birds now list three subspecies of Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae (Red-fronted Parakeet) as occurring in Australian islands:

Norfolk Island Green Parrot Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae cookii
Macquarie Island Red-fronted Parakeet Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae erythrotis
Lord Howe Red-fronted Parakeet Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae subflavescens

Following recent major changes to the BirdLife Australia website I can no longer find the reference pages for the working list, so I can't check if there are public documents which explain their reasoning.

Simon

Hi Simon,

With the recent website changes, it looks like the Working List is currently hosted at:

https://birdata.birdlife.org.au/whats-in-a-name

Best regards,
Craig