October 2025

Overview

Go directly to October 2025 spreadsheet downloads with range updates.

Go directly to October 2025 Taxonomy Updates & Corrections.

This is the 19th installment of updates following the publication, in 2007, of the 6th edition of The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. Because the Clements Checklist has become tightly interwoven with eBird, the checklist now is referred to as the eBird/Clements Checklist. The entire checklist (including documentation of all revisions and new range updates from v2024) is available as a downloadable spreadsheet (in Excel and .csv formats). This year’s spreadsheet version is eBird/Clements Checklist v2025, and was released on 31 October 2025.

As usual, we post a list of the major 2025 Updates & Corrections (e.g., new species, splits, lumps, and name changes). As noted above, however, full documentation of all changes is incorporated into the spreadsheet itself; and eBird has a summary of the major changes.

The Clements et al. (2025) spreadsheet contains the following fields (data columns):

• Sort v2025: This is the sequence of species, groups, and subspecies in eBird/Clements v2025.
• Species code:  Internal taxon identifier, added to the Clements Checklist 2025 and eBird/Clements Checklist v2025 and relates to the Cornell Lab identifiers for each taxon. These are not necessarily stable with respect to taxonomic concepts between versions, but they usually are and help maintain stable URLs in eBird and Macaulay Library. Note that this field has traditionally been provided for the eBird Taxonomy, but these codes are new for subspecies and families this year.
• Taxon Concept Id: A persistent, unique identifier for the taxonomic concept which is maintained by Avibase and can be looked up in the URLs of that website (e.g., the Northern House-Martin has the concept ID 30FEC6BE and can be looked up using the URL: https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/species.jsp?avibaseid=30FEC6BE). This is the best database identifier to be used to compare taxa between this version and future versions of the taxonomies. It also can be used to track any changes to the circumscribed range of any taxon and can be compared to see how taxonomic concepts move between species_code or scientific name.
• Clements v2025 change: Concise note indicating that a change from eBird/Clements Checklist v2024 occurred for that entry. Sometimes only a single change is made per entry; in other cases several changes are made.
• Text for website v2025: This gives details of the change(s) from Clements Checklist v2024 for that entry. More information is given for most changes in the 2025 Updates and Corrections.
• Category: This indicates whether the entry on that line is a species, a subspecies, a monotypic group (i.e., a group that is equivalent to a single subspecies), or a polytypic group (a group composed of two or more subspecies). The total number of subspecies recognized in the eBird/Clements Checklist is the sum of all entries listed as “subspecies” and as “group (monotypic)”.
• English name
• Scientific name
• Authority: The name(s) of the person, or group of people, who described a species or subspecies, followed by the year of publication of the description (this field was first added in 2022). Authorities are in parentheses if originally described in a different genus than now used here.
• Name and authority: The full scientific name combined with the authority, in a single column (this field was first added in 2022).
• Range
• Order
• Family
• Extinct: An entry (1) in this column means that the species or subspecies is extinct.
• Extinct year: The year the species or subspecies went extinct or an approximation of the last year in which it was reported; “xxxx” is used when the date of extinction is not readily accessible.
• Sort v2024: The sequence of species in eBird/Clements Checklist v2024.

Summary Statistics for eBird/Clements Checklist v2025

Species

This year’s update includes 40 species gained because of splits and 18 species lost through lumps; this amounts to a net gain of 22 species and a new total of 11,167 species worldwide.

With the publication of AviList (v2025) in June 2025, our updates this year are explicitly focused on aligning with AviList. A few changes, like the recognition of Salvadoran Flycatcher (Myiarchus flavidior), the splits of Warbling Vireo (Vireo gilvus) and Black-faced Dacnis each into two species, and a few others, are changes that have been reviewed by AviList for v2026, endorsed by AOS-NACC or SACC, and are implemented here in advance of the publication of AviList v2026 in anticipation of those changes being recognized in the near future. In fall 2026, we expect the update schedules for AviList and ebird/Clements to align in a way that make these types of predictive changes unnecessary. The alignment with AviList does result in additional departures from NACC and AOS-SACC, although the AviList and eBird/Clements teams are working closely with those groups to maximize alignment. Still, several changes for this update  also align with the 2025 decisions of the American Ornithological Society’s North American Classification and Nomenclature Committee (NACC), and most of the recent decisions of the South American Classification Committee (SACC) through July 2025.

Taxon Concept Identifiers

We include Taxon Concept ID as a separate column; this is a unique taxonomic identifier meant to identify a specific taxonomic concept. The same English name, scientific name, and even type specimen may be applied to different populations over time, even across versions within a single taxonomy. A Taxon Concept ID refers to a population with shared characteristics and a specific range circumscription and not to the treatment of these populations within a specific taxonomy. For example, when well-defined subspecies or subspecies groups are elevated to species level (i.e., a split), the Taxon Concept IDs for each of these will not change even though the common and scientific names and taxonomic rank will change. A change to the genus or the spelling of a scientific name will not result in a change to the Taxonomic Concept ID. Taxon Concept IDs are the best way to track taxonomic changes through time and to accurately integrate unrelated datasets. We use the Taxon Concept IDs developed and maintained by Avibase which also maintains linkages between avian taxonomic authorities and versions through time. Example: In 2021, eBird/Clements lumped Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus) with American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos), resulting in no name change for American Crow but a substantial change in the range of American Crow, since populations in coastal British Columbia and Alaska are now included in American Crow (Corvus brachrhynchos). Consequently, this lump results in (1) deletion of Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus) from the dataset; (2) conversion of all those former Northwestern Crow records to American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos); (3) change in the Taxon Concept ID for American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) from avibase-9E9F2476 to avibase-69544B59. Thus, the Taxon Concept ID helps to track taxonomic changes, including those where the name might not change but the actual taxonomic concept does change, such as American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).

Range Statements

We are very pleased to report that for the first time, Clements includes complete range statements not only for every monotypic species and every subspecies in the list, but also for every polytypic species. These new range statements have been written by the Clements team (primarily Pam Rasmussen), with many also by Don Roberson and Juan Freile. The range statements are updated annually and also form the core range information that is being used in AviList.

Groups

eBird/Clements Checklist has adopted the concept of the group, which initially was developed by eBird. A “group” is a distinctive (field identifiable) subspecies or group of subspecies. The group is not a formal taxonomic unit, but often represents a potential future split (and so groups are a valuable taxonomic tool). Many new groups were added this year.

Higher-Level Taxonomy

One order is deleted this year, since Bucconidae and Galbulidae are moved to Piciformes and the order Galbuliformes is no longer recognized. This reduces the total number of avian orders by one to a new total of 45.

There were several family-level changes, all of which align with AviList. First, a nomenclatural error is corrected with the change from Scotocercidae to Cettiidae, since the latter has priority. Second, two Caribbean families—Nesospingidae and Spindalidae—are lumped into an expanded Phaenicophilidae, which is renamed from Hispaniolan Tanagers to Greater Antillean Tanagers, since it now covers representatives from multiple islands. In addition, Bucorvidae—a family previously recognized for the two species of ground-hornbills—is subsumed within Bucerotidae. The total number of extant families in the eBird/Clements Checklist thus becomes 251 (including the family Hawaiian honeyeaters, Mohoidae of Hawaii, all species of which are extinct).

These 251 families are listed below, with the names of orders in the left column in bold, followed by the number of families in that order (in parentheses, after the name of each order). The middle and right columns are the scientific and English names of the families followed by the number of species in each family (in parentheses, after the name of each family).