Paul Talbert wrote:
"One can hope. I was disapppointed to find out how little decade-old
molecular results on the relationships of the various orders and families
were reflected in the third edition of the National Geographic field guide,
apparently because they were not reflected in the 1998 A.O.U. checklist on
which it was based. The only concession to the considerable data on bird
phylogeny collected by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990), Allen Wilson's group,
Mindel et al. (1997) and others that I noticed in NG3 is the statement
under New World Vultures (Cathartidae) that "Recent evidence indicates a
relationship to storks". Despite this statement, the Cathartidae are still
placed in their traditional position next to the Falconiformes rather than
next to the storks!"

I wasn't surprised at all. Field guides are not a scientific document per
se, they are an identification guide aimed at a general audience (with NG3,
the general audience is assumed to be a bit more bird savvy than the
Peterson guide's audience). Such changes in classification will take some
time to find their way fully into guides.

Especially with big birds like ducks and vultures, there are physical and
behavioral characteristics that birders associate with certain species that
make the grouping of these together on these characteristics more important
than the science. It seems strange to say that given what one hopes will
come out of bird study (namely data to be used by science), but the
avocation of bird identification is as much sport and pleasure as it is
scientific.

In the mid 1880s, even as he had chaired the first AOU Check-List committee,
Elliott Coues kept the order within his Key to North American Birds in the
same order as he had in the 1870s. While he did give an appendix to show
the relationship between the two guides, Coues realized that some of his
audience would be confused by a major overhaul of his order. He stated (I
paraphrase here) that it's better not to introduce the entirety of the
change all at once--people have grown used to certain orders. The same will
probably occur with the Sibley-Monroe information and other studies. WHen
the ducks are overhauled as they were a couple of years ago, and then they
look like they might be overhauled again, what's a field guide editor to do.
Plates cost money to redraw, and some of the order is not the same as the
apparent logic of relationship in the field (teals are the same size, and
it's convenient to have them close together). Field guide editors make
these choices based upon audience knowledge, and the history of guides
reflects this.
RK
Ray Korpi
rkorpi at clark.edu
Portland, OR/Clark College, Vancouver WA
President, Oregon Field Ornithologists