Beware the range map

Cornell's site All About Birds is something that I often send people links to when suggesting ID's - I sometimes get "what's this bird" inquiries because of the websites that I run. But two things lately have illustrated that their range maps may be way out of whack.

A discussion on the email list TEXBIRDS about American Black Duck shows that their range map for this birds has it occurring all the way down into the lower RGV. That's nonsense, and there's only a handful of recent records for this species in TX.

Chatting to a friend about her finding a Peregrine Falcon on campus in Illinois led to the discovery of a large variance between Sibley's range map (which seems plausible) and the AAB map which seems to ignore the reintroduction of the Peregrine in the east.