I'd like to postscript Hal Opperman's generous offer of a
Sibley-Ahlquist-Monroe (SAM) North American checklist. No one should use
this list without realizing that it represents a hypothesis, one which will
be continually tested and refined. Because it is a far piece from the
present-day "accepted" classification, it will be many years before all
parts of it are satisfactorily "confirmed." Until then, many ornithologists
have gone on record in advising that the list not be accepted uncritically.
The number of methodological errors in the phylogenetic assessments cast
doubt on some of the classification, irrespective of the DNA-DNA
hybridization data. Much of it will doubtless prove to be pretty accurate,
but not all!

For example, we're not any surer that starlings and mockingbirds are in the
same family than we were 10 years ago, even though that's where the SAM
classification has put them. What ornithologists (or I shoud just speak for
myself) are afraid of is that birders will accept this list entirely
uncritically, perhaps just because it's on the cutting edge and
"professionals" have published it, rather than because their knowledge of
birds makes it obviously correct. Then all kinds of checklists and field
guides will be published in the SAM order, and it will become de facto the
"correct" classification of birds. I guess it may be appealing to birders
also because it does a lot of splitting of species, and most of these
splits are surely appropriate. As a list of the species of birds of the
world, it is much better than anything else currently available. However,
it is premature to accept it as *the* classification of birds.

By the way, I have the SAM list of birds of the world with scientific and
common names, year of description and author of both genera and species,
and SAM number. It is in Microsoft Word for the Mac. I don't know if it's
too big to send over e-mail, but if anyone wishes to send me a Mac disk and
a SASE envelope to mail it back to you (or bring it to me some time), I
will be happy to share the list. It can be ported over to MS-DOS easily.

Dennis Paulson
Slater Museum of Natural History
University of Puget Sound
Tacoma, WA 98416
206-756-3798
dpaulson at ups.edu