Question:
Dr. David Bird’s response to proposed bird name changes
Response:
Sometime in the next 2 or 3 years, about 80 or so North American birds are going to be declared officially extinct….well, not the birds themselves but their current common names. This announcement on November 3, 2023 by the American Ornithological Society, which is officially in charge of deciding North American bird names basically means that we will no longer call Cooper’s hawks Cooper’s hawks or Stellar’s jays Stellar jays. It is a decision meant to dissociate these birds from what are called problematic eponyms.
For example: Hammond’s flycatcher is named after William Alexander Hammond, a former U.S. Surgeon-General who held the view that the mental and/or physical faculties of both Black folks and Indigenous peoples were not much higher than those of an organ grinder monkey! There are many other examples whereupon someone currently honoured with a bird named after him condoned slavery, for example. I was actually engaged in a Zoom conversation with over 100 North American ornithologists and birders about this very matter three or four years ago. I recall having strong mixed feelings about it because I thought that it was to take away the legacy of bonafided deserving people like Georg Wilhelm Stellar, a distinguished German zoologist who has no less than three birds named after him—the Steller’s jay, the Steller’s eider and the Steller’s sea-eagle. However, I also understand that to cherry-pick the birds with human names associated with them could take years of bitter debate and that perhaps giving the birds names that somehow connect the person viewing them with a geographical and/or physical identity to help them ascertain the species upon seeing it is not a bad idea. The Canada jay, whose range falls mainly in Canada, is a good representation of the concept. As for newly proposed names, a good birding friend came up with the name, black-crested jay, for the Steller’s jay. Makes sense to me! It should also be noted that the Latin names will not be changed, thus preserving the legacies of deserving folks who discovered or first described the birds in the scientific literature. The really big winners in all of this, of course, will be active authors and book publishers involved with bird reference and guide books because these name changes, once decided upon and written in stone, will automatically mean that all of the current books on our shelves will become as obsolete as the birds’ common names. Maybe not a huge headache considering that we are all headed toward electronic field guides. And a small price to pay perhaps for doing the right thing in today’s society.
David M. Bird, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Wildlife Biology, McGill University www.askprofessorbird.com
David M. Bird is Emeritus Professor of Wildlife Biology and the former Director of the Avian Science and Conservation Centre at McGill University. As a past-president of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists, a former board member with Birds Canada, a Fellow of both the American Ornithological Society and the International Ornithological Union, he has received several awards for his conservation and public education efforts. Dr. Bird is a regular columnist on birds for Bird Watcher’s Digest and Canadian Wildlife magazines and is the author of several books and over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He is the consultant editor for multiple editions of DK Canada’s Birds of Canada, Birds of Eastern Canada, Birds of Western Canada, and Pocket Birds of Canada. To know more about him, visit www.askprofessorbird.com or email david.bird@mcgill.ca.
