The Peters' Check-list of the Birds of the World Database

In 2014, I have finished compiling, with precious help from Jo Warnier, a database containing most of the information found in Peters' seminal work: Check-List of the Birds of the World, original published between 1931 and 1987 in 16 volumes.

Peters' checklist was the first comprehensive checklist of all known birds species and subspecies, and has served as the foundation for several other publications published afterwards such as the Clements checklist (Clements et al. 2013) and the Howard and Moore checklist (Dickinson et al. 2013, 2014).

This database was created based on the work made available through the Museum of Comparative Zoology--Biodiversity Heritage Library digitization project http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581, under a creative-commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). The optical character-recognition (OCR) files were parsed into a structured database, and efforts were made to clean the resulting file of errors, including errors introduced by the OCR process itself (mostly with species scientific names). However, in the first version of this database, only minimal effort was made to correct the OCR from the type descriptions and the range statements. These may be improved in a subsequent release (please contact me if you are interested to help). Footnotes that appeared in the books have also been excluded from this first version of the database, and there are no plans to include them at this stage.

Recommended Citation:

D. Lepage, J. Warnier, 2014. The Peters' Check-list of the Birds of the World (1931-1987) Database. Accessed on 21/05/2024 from Avibase, the World Database: https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/peterschecklist.jsp.

Permissions

You are free to Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material, under the following terms.

License Type: Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Downloads

Version 1: 18 June 2014: PETERS_DATABASE_version_1.xlsx (4.7 Mb)

References

• Volume 1: Peters, JL. 1931. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 1. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 345 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 2: Peters, JL. 1934. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 401 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 3: Peters, JL. 1937. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 3. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 311 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 4: Peters, JL. 1940. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 4. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 259 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 5: Peters, JL. 1945. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 5. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 306 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 6: Peters, JL. 1948. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 6. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 259 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 7: Peters, JL. 1951. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 7. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 318 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 8: Amadon, D., E. Mayr, D.W. Snow, M.A. Traylor, Jr. and J.T. Zimmer. 1979. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 8. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 365 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 9: Mayr, E. and J.C. Greenway. 1960. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 9. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 506 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 10: Deignan, H.G. and S.D. Ripley. 1964. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 10. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 502 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 11: Mayr, E. and M.A. Traylor, Jr. 1986. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 11. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 638 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 12: Greenway, J.C., E. Mayr, R.E. Moreau, A.L. Rand, D.W. Snow and R. A. Paynter, Jr. 1967. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 12. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 495 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 13: Paynter, R.A., Jr. and R.W. Storer. 1970. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 13. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 443 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 14: Blake, E.R., J.C. Greenway, T.R. Howell, G.H. Lowery, E. Mayr, B.L. Monroe, A.L. Rand and M.A. Traylor, Jr. 1968. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 14. 433 pp. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 15: Amadon, D., E.R. Blake, J.C. Greenway, E. Mayr, R.E. Moreau and C. Vaurie. 1962. Check-list of birds of the world: a continuation of the work of James L. Peters. Vol. 15. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 315 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 16: Paynter, R.A., Jr. 1987. Check-List of the Birds of the World: comprehensive index. Vol. 16. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 550 pp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Volume 1, ed. 2: Mayr, E., Cottrell, G.W. 1979. Check-List of the Birds of the World. Vol. 1, second edition. Revision of the Work of James L. Peters. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14581
• Clements JF, Schulenberg TS, Iliff MJ, Sullivan BL, Wood CL, Roberson D (2013) The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: Version 6.8. Downloaded from http: //www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
• Dickinson, E.C. and Remsen, Jr., J.V. (2013). The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, 4th. edition. Vol. 1. Aves Press. 512 pp.
• Dickinson, E.C. and Christidis, L. (2014). The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, 4th. edition. Vol. 2.