Scythebill 19.4.0: the IOC 15.2 taxonomy and the Windows Store

Scythebill 19.4.0 is now available. It's got the new - and last - IOC 15.2 taxonomy. It's also now available in the Windows Store!

As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

IOC 15.2

The IOC taxonomy has released its latest, and last taxonomy. More than anything else, I'd like to thank the prime movers behind the IOC taxonomy - David Donsker, Frank Gill, and Pamela Rasmussen - for all of their excellent work over the years. They've set a very high bar for future taxonomy maintainers!

This last update is largely one of alignment with AviList, and as so it contains more lumps than splits. There are some splits from the SACC (South American Checklist Committee) which I would expect to be mirrored in the AviList and eBird 2026 taxonomies. As always, you can visit the "Split and Lumps" report in Special reports to get a full rundown of how it affected your list:

The obvious question is what I'll be doing with IOC - and AviList! - going forward. My current plan:

• eBird has stated that in 2026 they will be fully aligned with AviList. Therefore, the eBird 2026 taxonomy release will be AviList, so when Scythebill upgrades to that taxonomy (expected in October), it will support AviList.
• I plan to keep IOC 15.2 supported in Scythebill for about one year. By the time the eBird/AviList 2027 taxonomy is released, I plan to remove IOC altogether from Scythebill.

Windows Store

Scythebill can now be installed directly from the Windows Store!  No more dire warning messages from Windows, just a fast and easy install.

Other fixes

• A few species were accidentally marked as "Undescribed" (Principe Scops-Owl, Timor Nightjar, and Ampay Tapaculo), which removed them from life list totals.
• Trips which crossed top-level regions - and were therefore "World" trips - no longer block editing the trip name.
• A (harmless) error message when closing the "Edit..." dialog in Browse by location is now fixed.
• Opening a non-.bsxm file as if it were a .bsxm file now gives a clearer error message.