All of the species on this page have been recorded in the wild in Europe or its offshore waters, but not all of the photos shown here were necessarily taken in Europe. Although I have seen most of the birds on the British list during my travels around the world, I have not included vagrants to Europe unless they were photographed in Britain or Europe which, since I very rarely go on "twitches", is not very many of them! Birds that breed or are regular visitors to Europe have been included regardless of where the photos were taken.
Major advances in molecular systematics have caused significant changes in the taxonomic classification of birds in recent years and the order used below follows that proposed in HBW & Birdlife International's Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World vols.1&2 (del Hoyo & Collar, 2014, 2016).
Apart from a major restructuring of the order of the families, other significant changes in the new taxonomy compared to that in the print version of HBW include the lumping and spliting of several families. For example, in the new classification, gulls, terns and skimmers are all lumped under the family heading of Laridae while the Sylviidae has been split into several splinter families: (Reed-warblers (Acrocephalidae), Grasshopper-warblers (Locustellidae), Bush-warblers (Scotocercidae) and the Leaf-warblers (Phylloscopidae) leaving only the Sylvia warblers as the sole European members of the Sylviidae.
Tichodromadidae |
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