The Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC), founded in 1985, evaluates the evidence for records of birds that are rare or unusual in Illinois. As a standing committee of the Illinois Ornithological Society, IORC strives to improve the quality of submitted ornithological field data in Illinois both through example and dissemination of pertinent information and techniques.
The committee is responsible for publishing and maintaining the official checklist of Illinois birds. It also publishes in the journal, the Meadowlark, reports on rare birds, indicating whether the sighting has been accepted. The committee houses all bird records and evaluations of evidence thereof (including the evidence itself) at the Department of Natural Resources archives at:
Avian Ecology Program
600 North Grand Avenue West, Suite 4
Springfield, Illinois 62702
Students and professional ornithologists are welcome to inquire or review any bird records housed there.
Observers are encouraged to submit documentation of rare and unusual birds to IORC. The committee maintains a review list of birds that require documentation in the state. To receive more information about IORC or a copy of the bylaws, contact IORC Secretary Doug Stotz at:
Douglas Stotz, Conservation Ecologist/Ornithologist
Environmental and Conservation Programs
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 South Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605
Phone: (312) 665-7438
or by e-mail: Doug Stotz.
The documentation form can be printed out from this PDF*, or by sending a request via e-mail to Mary Hennen. If you have trouble opening the PDF documentation form from the above link, right-click directly on the link and choose Save Target As from the menu that appears. Save the file to your desktop and double-click it. Adobe Reader will launch and the documentation form will open up in it.
*Requires Adobe Reader. If you don't have Adobe Reader on your computer, click the graphic below and follow the instructions to download it. Adobe Reader is safe and completely free.
IORC accepts for review bird records which, in general, do not occur annually in Illinois, or which are extremely rare in all but a few counties in the state. The committee also is interested in reviewing other records of significance including first state nesting records, unusual dates or locations of occurrence, etc.; these are listed in the supplemental review list. The review list is based on the current checklist of Illinois state birds and additional rare species accepted since publication. Any species not included on the Illinois IORC checklist should be documented. The committee welcomes evidence* in the form of a written documentation, sketch, photograph, video or specimen for any of the following species:
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Black-bellied Whistling-Duck Fulvous Whistling-Duck Brant Eurasian Wigeon Cinnamon Teal 1 Garganey Tufted Duck King Eider Common Eider Harlequin Duck 2 Barrow's Goldeneye Yellow-billed Loon Clark's Grebe Northern Gannet Brown Pelican Neotropic Cormorant Anhinga Magnificent Frigatebird Reddish Egret White Ibis Glossy Ibis 3 White-faced Ibis 3 Roseate Spoonbill Wood Stork Black Vulture 4 Swallow-tailed Kite White-tailed Kite Mississippi Kite 4 Swainson's Hawk 5 Ferruginous Hawk Gyrfalcon Prairie Falcon Black Rail Whooping Crane Snowy Plover Long-billed Curlew Sharp-tailed Sandpiper Purple Sandpiper 2 Curlew Sandpiper Ruff |
Little Gull Black-headed Gull Black-tailed Gull Mew Gull Slaty-backed Gull Western Gull Glaucous-winged Gull Ross's Gull Ivory Gull Sooty Tern Large-billed Tern Arctic Tern Gull-billed Tern Royal Tern Sandwich Tern Black Skimmer Pomarine Jaeger Parasitic Jaeger Long-tailed Jaeger Dovekie Ancient Murrelet Band-tailed Pigeon White-winged Dove Inca Dove Common Ground-Dove Groove-billed Ani Barn Owl 6 Northern Hawk Owl Burrowing Owl Boreal Owl Broad-billed Hummingbird Allen's Hummingbird Williamson's Sapsucker Red-cockaded Woodpecker Black-backed Woodpecker Say's Phoebe Vermilion Flycatcher Ash-throated Flycatcher Gray Kingbird Fork-tailed Flycatcher |
Western Scrub-Jay Clark's Nutcracker Black-billed Magpie Violet-green Swallow Boreal Chickadee Brown-headed Nuthatch Rock Wren Bewick's Wren Northern Wheatear Townsend's Solitaire Mountain Bluebird Sage Thrasher Curve-billed Thrasher Sprague's Pipit Bohemian Waxwing Black-throated Gray Warbler Townsend's Warbler Hermit Warbler Kirtland's Warbler Swainson's Warbler MacGillivray's Warbler Hepatic Tanager Western Tanager Green-tailed Towhee Cassin's Sparrow Bachman's Sparrow Brewer's Sparrow Black-throated Sparrow Lark Bunting Golden-crowned Sparrow Chestnut-collared Longspur Black-headed Grosbeak Lazuli Bunting Painted Bunting 6 Great-tailed Grackle Bullock's Oriole Scott's Oriole Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch Pine Grosbeak Hoary Redpoll |
*All review list evidence and documentation forms should be sent directly to the IORC Secretary:
Douglas Stotz, Conservation Ecologist/Ornithologist
Environmental and Conservation Programs
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605
Documentation can also be sent via e-mail: Doug Stotz. To make documentation by e-mail easier, the documentation questions can be copied from the Rare Bird Documentation Questions page and pasted into the body of the e-mail message. An HTML version of the documentation form is also available. Contact the IOS Webmaster for the URL.