Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories

 

South American Classification Committee

 

 

Version 21 June 2025

 

Mark Pearman, Juan Freile, Jhonathan Miranda, and Van Remsen (coordinators)

 

This page provides a link to the Excel spreadsheet that compares the lists of bird species documented for each South American country and territory. Note that these lists may not be the official national lists because criteria for inclusion on those lists may vary from SACC criteria -- see below:

 

Geographic boundaries

They do not include areas outside the South American Classification Committee's official boundaries. For example, Easter Island is a Chilean territory, and Isla San Andrés is a Colombian territory, yet neither area is within the SACC area; thus, species found only there are not included in the lists given for those countries. Offshore boundaries extend 200 nautical miles from coastlines, including islands, within the SACC area.

 

Criteria for inclusion

Criteria for inclusion are the same as for the SACC list as a whole. Only those species documented by tangible, independently verifiable evidence are included on each list. Such evidence may consist of a specimen, a photograph or video, or an audio-recording, as long as the evidence is archived in an institutional collection, and its existence can be verified. On-line records on stable, long-term initiatives (e.g., Macaulay Library records from eBird, iNaturalist, Wikiaves, Xeno-Canto, and similar sources) that provide precise details on date and geographic coordinates and whose validity can be publicly assessed will be considered archived.  Therefore, evidence that is privately held also does not constitute acceptable evidence.  Records documented only on web sites are not considered published because web sites are ephemeral.  Finally, sight records are not considered acceptable evidence, published or not.

 

 

Status

 

Each species is accorded a status code that conforms to SACC status codes for the main SACC list:

 

X = species known or assumed to breed in the country or territory.

 

X(e) = Endemic: a species is considered endemic to a country until a record (exclusive of V records – see below) from outside its boundaries supported by tangible evidence is published.

 

X(eb) = Endemic breeders: a species whose breeding population is restricted to one country, but nonbreeding populations are part of the regular avifauna of other countries.

 

NB = species that occur regularly and are detected every year, but do not breed.

 

V = species that occur only as vagrants, i.e., not recorded every year and thus not part of the area's core avifauna.

 

IN = species introduced by humans (or have colonized from introduced populations elsewhere) and have established, self-sustaining breeding populations.

 

EX = species that are extinct or extirpated from the country.

 

EX(e) = extinct species endemic to that country.

 

Also:

 

U = unconfirmed.  These include sight-only records, and specimens or records of dubious origin); they are not counted in total number of species recorded for the country.  This category does not include published reports that have been officially removed from a country’s list by that country’s formal review list committee or by its SACC country compilers.  This category was called “Hypothetical” and coded “H” in previous SACC country lists.

 

Taxonomy

The list uses the most recent SACC classification and is updated whenever the overall classification is changed. This allows comparisons among countries and territories using the same species-level taxonomy.

 

List Coordinators

Each country or territory has one or more individuals responsible for determining each initial list and for updating the list with new distributional information and, with help from SACC, changes in species limits. Dates indicate when the most recent major update of the list was undertaken (not just minor updates due to recent taxonomy and range extensions, which are incorporated when they are made to the SACC classification itself).

 

Birds of Argentina by Mark Pearman and Juan I. Areta 20 Apr 2025

 

Birds of Aruba by Steve Mlodinow 6 Mar 2020

 

Birds of Bolivia by Sebastian Herzog 2 June 2020

 

Birds of Bonaire by Eric C. Newton 14 Jul 2015

 

Birds of Brazil by José Fernando Pacheco and Carlos Eduardo Quevedo Agne 25 September 2023

 

Birds of Chile by Alvaro Jaramillo and Rodrigo Barros 22 Jun 2023

 

Birds of Colombia by Comité Colombiano de Registros Ornitológicos - CCRO (María Ángela Echeverry-Galvis, Orlando Acevedo-Charry, Jorge Enrique Avendaño, Camila Gómez, F. Gary Stiles, Felipe A. Estela, and Andrés M. Cuervo) 16 Jan 2024

 

Bird of Curaçao by Eric C. Newton 14 Jul 2015

 

Birds of Ecuador by Juan F. Freile 21 Apr 2025

 

Birds of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas by Robin WoodsAdd with solid fill and Santiago Imberti 23 June 2023

 

Birds of French Guiana by Olivier Claessens and Hugo Foxonet 13 Apr 2025

 

Birds of Guyana by Brian J. O’Shea and Mark B. Robbins 4 April 2025

 

Birds of Paraguay by Hugo Del Castillo, Rob Clay, Arne Lesterhuis, Paul Smith 2 Sep 2015

 

Birds of Peru by Manuel A. Plenge, Thomas S. Schulenberg, Thomas Valqui, and Fernando Angulo 21 June 2023

 

Birds of Suriname by Otte Ottema, Jan Hein Ribot, and Arie Spaans 25 Mar 2025

 

Birds of Trinidad and Tobago by Martyn Kenefick 25 Dec 2022

 

Birds of Uruguay by Santiago Claramunt and Joaquín Aldabe 1 Jun 2023

 

Birds of Venezuela by Jhonathan Miranda, Jose Gustavo León, Gianco Angelozzi, David Ascanio, John Kvarnbäck, Miguel Lentino, Curtis A. Marantz, Gustavo Rodríguez † 20 Sep 2024

 

 

 

TOTAL

Breeding

Endemics

Endemic Breeders

NB

V

IN

EX

Argentina

1047

886

19

7

75

71

9

6

Aruba

245

60

0

0

66

111

6

2

Bolivia

1408

1312

16

1

80

14

2

0

Bonaire

209

51

0

0

91

63

4

0

Brazil

1861

1640

239

 

116

93

5

7

Chile

525

323

12

6

67

128

6

1

Colombia

1912

1688

83

 

141

78

4

1

Curaçao

217

53

0

0

76

75

13

0

Ecuador

1670

1479

37

4

108

78

4

1

Falkland Islands

219

60

2

 

33

122

2

2

French Guiana

737

565

1

0

86

84

2

0

Guyana

828

726

0

 

87

12

2

1

Paraguay

694

589

0

 

60

38

2

5

Peru

1889

1663

119

 

139

84

3

0

Suriname

746

624

1

 

86

35

1

0

Trinidad & Tobago

489

265

2

0

75

131

7

11

Uruguay

500

328

0

0

84

75

9

4

Venezuela

1413

1259

48

 

99

33

6

1

 

 

 

Suggested citation for individual lists:

[Compiler names]. [year of most recent update]. Species lists of birds for South American countries and territories: [country]. [Version Day/Month/Year]. http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm

 

 

Mark Mulhollam’s site for generating checklists using SACC classification