National Bird List

Draft Checklist of Birds Occuring in Armenia

The following list presents taxa reliably recorded in Armenia and backed by a specimen or are substantiated by a convincing description. Square brackets indicate species that have been claimed for Armenia in some published sources, but lack evidence to substantiate their occurrence in the country. Square brackets also indicate records whose supplied descriptions need to be reassessed against contemporary identification criteria in order to establish whether the record can be regarded as acceptable. These records are included in this list until a future revision is completed (in prep). Note, however, that the status codes used here should be viewed as an approximate and rough guide. For many species sufficient status information is still lacking for the country.

The taxonomy and nomenclature used here is based on the 15th Draft of AERC TAC’s Checklist of bird taxa of the Western Palearctic. Subspecies with unproven claims from Armenia and those that may occur in the country are denoted by ‘?’. For almost all of the species denoted with ‘!’ there are less than ten recent reliable published records from Armenia (for some species, this is simply because of a lack of local observers), and hence are considered RARITIES. A few species denoted by ‘!’ have been claimed more than ten times, but due to the brevity and often the inadequacy of available information, all future observations will be of great interest. For any new records of these species/subspecies in Armenia, detailed documentation (and descriptions where necessary) are essential for them to be included in future reviews of Armenian avifauna. Rarity descriptions are particularly welcome: please e-mail such material to us at aves(AT)armeniabirding.info.

Status abbreviations

R = resident with confirmed breeding records
SB = summer visitor with confirmed breeding records
S = species that probably breed in Armenia but for which proof is unavailable, or species that occasionally oversummer without breeding
W = winter visitor
M = passage migrant
v = vagrant
FB = formerly bred
e = extinct in Armenia
? = status uncertain during the relevant season
Lower case abbreviations e.g. sb or m indicate the species is generally uncommon or rare at the relevant season.

Download Checklist (Excel file, 70 KB)