The update of Zhejiang bird checklist

Abstract

Complete checklist records are essential to understand regional bird diversity and the status of the distribution of birds. The Zhejiang bird checklist was last presented as the Aves Branch of Zhejiang Fauna in 1990. Since then, many new records had been added, of which most remain unpublished. We have collected and examined all published and unpublished new records from Zhejiang habitats as well as those from the Aves Branch of Zhejiang Fauna. We have confirmed the evidence of the new records, which includes specimens, photographs, videos, sounds and tissue samples. We changed the Latin names of 131 species and subspecies and 41 Chinese names according to the new taxonomy and nomenclature. We provide an updated Zhejiang bird checklist for a total of 483 species and 24 subspecies, including 70 new species records, of which 47 species are reported for the first. Most of the new records are based on recent photographs taken by bird watchers.