It’s official – there is now one comprehensive global list of 11,131 birds! Partners Birdlife International, keeper of the IUCN Red List and DataZone, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Ornithological Society, the International Ornithologists’ Union IOU) and Avibase have created one accepted bird list. Now, regardless of where you keep your bird list, it will be exactly the same as everyone else’s and will be updated annually. No more choice of bird list, or confusion about species. After four years of co-operative work, the new list is being rolled out and is already in operation on eBird. Why should you care about this? Apart from having one official list of species, it also makes it much easier to do updates on species changes, and provides clarity for conservation. You can download it for free at AviList.