This is the official California state checklist of birds as compiled by the Western Field Ornithologists’ California Bird Records Committee (hereafter CBRC; see names of members in Acknowledgments). Several developments have rendered the last state checklist (Jones et al. 1981) obsolete. The American Ornithologists' Union (hereafter AOU) has published its Sixth Edition of the Check-list of North American Birds (AOU 1983) and its Thirty-fifth Supplement (AOU 1985), which contain numerous taxonomic innovations that were not, and could not have been, anticipated by Jones et al. (1981).