California Towhee 4 letter code is incorrect

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Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome

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Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.): The 4 letter code for California Towhee is CATO. Unfortunately, iNaturalist only accepts CATL as the 4 letter code, which is incorrect.

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This is not a bug, rather something that you can flag on the taxon page or edit yourself.

When ID’ing birds, I usually use the 4 letter banding codes to quickly pull up the name, which are typically the fist 2 letter of the first word followed by the 1st 2 letters of the 2nd word, unless this would result in 2 species with the same code. These are standard codes set by the Bird Banding Lab. California Towhee should be CALT (because CATO conflicts with Canyon Towhee), but iNat only recognizes CATL, which doesn’t make any sense. Any idea why?

There is a flag there, but unfortunately the banding code was incorrectly entered. The flag suggests that CALT is the correct code, but CATL was entered by accident. How can I correct that?

You can comment on the flag. Alternatively, you could add your own name on the bottom half of the taxonomy page with the correct spelling and let a curator to delete the wrong one.

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Looks like it’s fixed?

Aou 4 Letter Codes CALT https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/73044-Melozone-crissalis

Please see https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator%2Bguide#names for editting/adding names. Since the 4 letter code is corrected, I have resolved your flag as well.

4 Likes