Bird code systems: The AOU Check-List

This page is an older version of the author's writings on bird nomenclature systems. Please see the current version.

The best way to represent the name of a bird is to spell it out, and to conform (where possible) to the names standardized in the current edition of the American Ornithological Union (AOU) Check-List of North American Birds.

However, using the AOU standardized names has some drawbacks:

• For computer applications requiring bird names to be encoded for storage, typing a full name is prohibitively inefficient.
• The AOU does not address the common problem of representing imprecise identifications such as "duck sp." or "large falcon".
• A system for retrieval of sight records must be able to handle exotics (e.g., escaped waterfowl) that are not included in the AOU Check-List.

Last updated: 2005/02/02 23:34:18
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/~shipman/z/nom/aoucheck.html