One of the purposes of the Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC), per its bylaws, is “to maintain the official Illinois State List of Birds.” Among the various changes and updates to the list, the most exciting are additions of species. Year 2019 was a banner year in this regard, with the species total growing by five. By comparison, the previous five species additions happened over a five-year long period from 2014 to 2018. Four of the five from 2019 represented species unrecorded in Illinois prior to 2019: Limpkin, Little Stint, Lewis’s Woodpecker, and Cassin’s Kingbird. Three of these were long-staying vagrants, allowing many Illinois birders to travel to see them. Only the kingbird was a one-day wonder. The fifth addition, Barnacle Goose, came from evaluations concluding in 2019 of prior records going back to 1983. The species total for Illinois now rests at 449.
Sneaking under the radar in all this was that 2019 included a State List change event of a rarity on a par with that of adding five new species. A family of birds was newly added to the state list! Limpkin is the sole member of Aramidae, a family within order Gruiformes (which also includes the rails and cranes).
Families are added to the State List very infrequently. The last time was, well, 2017, but that event stemmed from Yellow-breasted Chat being split out from the Wood-Warblers (family Parulidae) into its own family Icteriidae. Yellow-breasted Chats have been present in Illinois for a long time. The four most recent family-level additions to Illinois’s list that were precipitated by a bird being newly recorded in the state were spread over a period of about 60 years.
Here are the six latest family additions to the Illinois list.
- 2019, family Aramidae (Limpkins): Limpkin
- [2017, family Icteriidae (Yellow-breasted Chats): Yellow-breasted Chat]
- 1990, family Muscicapidae (Old World Flycatchers): Northern Wheatear
- 1986, family Fregatidae (Frigatebirds): Magnificent Frigatebird
- 1983, family Sulidae (Boobies and Gannets): Northern Gannet
- 1962, family Alcidae (Auks, Murres, and Puffins): Ancient Murrelet
On the official Illinois State List of Birds there are now 449 species, 62 families, and 21 orders represented.