We are grateful to Eugene Eisenmann, Chairman, A.O.U. Committee on Classification and Nomenclature, for the following comments pertaining to the nomenclature used in “A Checklist of the Birds of California” (Calif. Birds 1: 4–28):
“I note that your California species list adopts a number of changes from the nomenclature of the last A.O.U. Check-list of North American Birds. May I point out a few others, involving purely nomenclatural (not taxonomic) considerations, worth bearing in mind? Your list overlooked a few corrections made by the last A.O.U. Check-list Committee shortly after the printing of the 1957 Check-list, which were embodied in the second printing and were published in The Auk 79 (3): 493–494, 1962. Those pertinent that you did not catch were the correction of the ending of the specific name of the Cape Petrel which should be Daption capense and of the Bohemian Waxwing which should be Bombycilla garrulus, and the correction of the English specific name by inclusion of a hyphen in Red-winged Blackbird. If one follows the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature the correct spelling of the specific name of the Wandering Tattler should be Heteroscelus incanus. Further, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has directed that the following changes in specific or generic names be made (despite priority of some other name): Eared Grebe – Podiceps nigricollis; Common Snipe – Gallinago gallinago; Cardinal – Cardinalis cardinalis.”