Two weeks ago, the American Ornithological Society announced it was going to rename every bird named after a person. Following a long but quiet debate, some folks had concluded the birding community was not universally welcoming to all people.
I’ll leave that debate to others. Proponents will continue to argue that birds should not be named after people associated with colonialism and slavery. Opponents will continue to argue that the names have historical significance, and we should not succumb to the whims of woke liberals.
I will continue to argue that the entire practice of naming birds after people, good or bad, is uselessly anachronistic.
Naming living things after people was common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it’s an impractical way to describe a bird. You can guess what a black-throated blue warbler looks like, but what does a Wilson’s warbler look like?
It’ll take years to rename all these species. Choosing names is hard. Take color descriptors, for example.
Brown-shaded birds are also described as ruddy, chestnut, and rufous. Red birds are also sometimes called rufous, along with rose, scarlet and vermillion.
Drab-toned species are variously called olive, sooty, gray and blue-gray. Out west, the hepatic tanager is so-named because it’s liver-colored.
Red knots and red phalaropes are red shorebirds. But when they pass through Maine in the fall, they’re not red. In the Everglades, there are egrets that are white, egrets that are snowy, and one poor egret that is only “reddish.”
In the northwest, the orange-crowned warbler is common but hard to describe. The orange crown is so small, it’s only visible to someone who collects the bird with a shotgun — which is how it got that name.
Now that I’m on a full rant, I urge the AOS to also rethink the nomenclature of birds named after places.
Take the Cape May warbler, for example. It was first identified in Cape May in 1811. It wasn’t seen there again for more than 100 years. The original specimen was probably migrating through New Jersey when it was collected by shotgun, yet the association persists.
Where are the worst places to find Nashville warblers and Tennessee warblers? Nashville and Tennessee. Both nest in the spruces and firs of the northern forest. Once again, the original specimens were likely collected in the Volunteer State during their brief passage in migration, but otherwise they are not found there.
You won’t find a Connecticut warbler anywhere near Connecticut. You won’t find a Philadelphia vireo in Philadelphia. Some Virginia rails nest in Virginia. But not many.
I’m not a fan of naming birds after countries, either. There are American robins, American crows, American kestrels, American coots, American goldfinches, American redstarts, American bitterns, American woodcocks, American black ducks and American golden plovers in Canada.
There are Canada jays and Canada warblers in the United States. I suspect there are more Canada geese south of the border than north, mostly because we have more golf courses and other fine places to poop.
And what should I make of the Lapland longspur? A few visit Maine each winter. They nest across northern Canada and much of Alaska. They also nest across the northern regions of Eurasia, including the Lapland region of Norway and Sweden, where they are known as Lapland buntings.
There are many more Lapland longspurs outside of Lapland than in Lapland. How is this nomenclature helpful?
Once you’re done with the country names, AOS, please eliminate all bird names that start with “common.” At various times of year, Maine hosts common eiders, goldeneyes, mergansers, terns, ravens, grackles, nighthawks and yellowthroats.
Most of these are, indeed, common. But common murres are not common here. Common redpolls are sporadic winter visitors, and there is nothing at all common about common gallinules and moorhens in Maine.
Altogether, I’ve seen 22 species of “common” birds in my North American travels, and I can attest that many were frightfully uncommon. I’ve seen exactly one common pauraque in Texas.
Including “common” in a bird name is, unfortunately, still very common. Up until two years ago, the mew gull was a small gull found from Europe to Greenland, with another population abundant from California through Alaska.
In 2021, the AOS split the mew gull into two species. Western birds were renamed short-billed gulls. European birds were henceforth to be known as – wait for it – common gulls.
There is one group of people I feel really sorry for — field guide writers. Their life’s work is about to become woefully out-of-date.
