The Science of Birds - Avian Rebrand: New Names for Many North American Birds

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

This episode—which is Number 87—is all about some big news in the birding world. The common names for about 150 North American bird species are going to change in the not-too-distant future.This comes from an announcement made by the American Ornithological Society just a few weeks ago, on November 1st.I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk about this. It’s a hot topic among birders right now. People have been asking me what I think about all these birds getting renamed. And so here we are.If you’re hearing about this for the first time, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry—I’ll explain.Yes, this is primarily relevant to birds and the humans who love them in the Western Hemisphere. Mostly North America for now.But similar changes may be on the horizon for your local birds, wherever you live. So I think you’ll find this interesting, even if you don’t live in the US or Canada. Links of InterestAmerican Ornithological Society (AOS) Council Statement on English Bird NamesAOS Community Congress on English Bird Names [VIDEO]  ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This episode, which is number 87, is all about some big news in the birding world. The common names for about 150 North American bird species are going to change in the not-too-distant future.

This comes from an announcement made by the American Ornithological Society just a few weeks ago on November 1st. Now, I don't normally make podcast episodes about the latest Breaking Bird News or birding gossip, but I couldn't pass up the chance to talk about this. It's a hot topic among birders right now. People have been asking me what I think about all these birds getting renamed. So here we are.

And if you're hearing about this for the first time and you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, I'll explain. And yes, this is primarily relevant to birds and the humans who love them in the Western hemisphere, mostly North America for now. But similar changes may be on the horizon for your local birds wherever you live. So I think you'll find this interesting, even if you don't live in the U.S. or Canada. All right, let's get right into it. of this, we first need some background, so we're all on the same page. Each bird species has more than one name, and these names are of two types. There's the scientific name, and there's the

common name. Every bird species and every other living thing that scientists have formally described has a scientific name. And I'm sure you know this. A bird's common name is whatever people actually call it in their local language. Take the rock pigeon, for example, a bird famous for living feral in cities around the world and famous for invading your personal space by the hundreds if you happen to be handing out scraps of bread. This species goes by many common names. Rostowf in the Netherlands, Paloma Domestica in Costa Rica, Kawarabato in Japan, and so on.

But the pigeon has just one scientific name, Columba Livia. Scientific names like this are standardized and generally agreed upon by ornithologists across the world, generally. Common names, however, are free to change all willy-nilly, whenever and by whomever. So common names can change freely, except in places like North America where the common names of birds are also standardized. The American Ornithological Society has a special committee that maintains an official checklist of North American birds. The scientists and other professionals on this committee make updates to the checklist every year. Okay, so there's that. The next bit of background info to discuss has to do with honorific or eponymous bird names. Eponymous names are those that

honor a person. As a few examples of eponyms, we have Ross's goose, Nelson's sparrow, Bewick's Wren, Audubon's Shearwater, and, as an example of a bird in Europe, Montague's Harrier. Some other eponyms for birds in the eastern hemisphere include Hemprick's Hornbill, Zappie's flycatcher, and Mrs. Hume's pheasant. And these are real, I'm not joking. Mrs. Hume was the wife of British ornithologist Alan Octavian Hume, and Mr. Hume has no less than seven birds named in his honor. You can usually spot an eponym easily because it's got that possessive apostrophe S in there. Scientific names can be eponymous too. Cooper's Hawk has the scientific name Auxipater Cuperii, so this species has congenital.

and scientific names that are honorific, that are eponymous. But some birds have an eponymous common name, but not an eponymous scientific name. Or vice versa. The Cuban Solitaire, for example, has the scientific name Maya Destes Elizabeth. Yep, that's right. The second part of the Cuban Solitaire's scientific name is Elizabeth. So who is this bird named after? Elizabeth Taylor, the actress? No. How about Queen Elizabeth the second? Well, that's closer, but

no. The scientific name Maya Destes Elizabeth honors Isabella the first, as in the first queen of Spain in the 15th century. Because as everyone knows, Isabella is the Spanish variation of the name Elizabeth. There's actually an entire book dedicated to this kind of information. It's called the eponym dictionary of birds. I've got a copy of it myself. So over the last few centuries, many birds were named after people like Alan Octavian Hume and Isabella of Spain. Sometimes the honored person had some important connection with the species in question, like maybe they were the one who discovered it for Western science. But in other cases, like the Cuban Solitaire, a bird might be named for a person who never actually saw the bird in person.

Now, imagine it was your responsibility to give a bird its official name. You might be tempted to name it after yourself. I mean, come on. I would love to have a newly discovered bird species named after me. I don't know, something like Ivan's three-horned swamp goose, or Ivan's lemon-scented murder lark, whatever. But in general, naming critters after yourself like this has been frowned upon. It's more typical that you would name a bird after someone else, a fellow naturalist or

ornithologist, perhaps a queen, a king, a wealthy benefactor, a friend, or maybe even your cousin, or your third cousin's piano teacher. Or a person you met at a cocktail party once. They were wearing a funny t-shirt that night, and you thought they were kind of nifty. And now, thanks to you, there's a bird named after that funny shirt-wearing person. They're immortalized. Forever! So, how many bird species in North America have one of these eponymous common names?

About 150. That amounts to roughly 17% of the continent's breeding bird species. Additionally, there's approximately 110 species in central and south. America that have eponymous common names. But here's the rub. Some of those people that birds were named after did things back in the day that, by today's standards, were not cool. They committed atrocities or harmed other people in one way or another. Bird names honoring people like that can be offensive to people today. The bad vibes conjured by such names might be a barrier to some people, excluding those people from feeling welcomed by the birding community, preventing them from

fully embracing the joy of birding. The American Ornithological Society, the AOS, has already changed a couple of these problematic names. Back in 2000, for example, they renamed a duck. The old name, although not eponymous, was potentially offensive to Native Americans. So the bird was given a new name, the long-tailed duck, clangula hyamilus. This tundra-breeding sea duck is one of the best ducks, at least in my opinion. If you're curious about the old politically incorrect name for the long-tailed duck, how about I let you look it up on your own? So I don't have to repeat it here, okay?

So that name change happened in 2000. Much more recently in 2019, a group of birders submitted. committed a proposal to the AOS to change the name of McCown's Longspur. This is a grassland-dwelling songbird in the family Calcareedi. Back in the 1800s, John McCown was the guy who made the first scientific collection of this bird. But later on, he became a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Places, things, and critters named after Confederate Civil War dudes. can be, understandably, offensive and exclusionary to many people today,

primarily because those historical figures fought to keep slavery in the U.S. But the AOS looked at the proposal to change the name of McCown's Longspur, and it was like, no. One of its guiding principles for bird names is stability. So, sticking to that principle, the AOS rejected the proposal. at first anyway. Fast forward about a year and the AOS came around. The classification and nomenclature committee renamed McCown's Longspur to the Thick-Build Longspur.

But note that the scientific name of this species is still Rinkofane's McCowneigh. McCown is still honored by the specific epithet of the Thick-Billed Longspur, for better or for worse. Anyway, this name change was made at a time when racial injustice was front-page news in America. Millions of people across the country were marching in the streets for the George Floyd protests. Movements to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion were on the rise. And so began a wave of discussion, debate, and change within the North American birding community. And I imagine in birding communities around the world.

world? What should we do about all these bird eponyms, especially the ones honoring people who engaged in some shady, if not egregious, behavior? In 2020, a grassroots movement called Bird Names for Birds got its start. Its members ended up submitting a letter to the AOS to address the problem of eponymous bird names. The primary goal of the Bird Names for Birds initiative is, is, well, it's right there in the name. They want birds to be named for their own unique qualities, what the birds look like, what they act like, what habitats they live in, and so on. Instead of being named after some human, as a verbal statue, as the bird names for birds, people put it. The bird names for birds folks want to get rid of all eponymous bird names, not just the

obviously offensive ones, but all of them. The Bird Names for Birds Movement and others like it picked up steam in 2021. They got the conversation going about bird eponyms. And the American Ornithological Society was listening. The AOS had thoughtful discussions about the topic of, eponymous bird names with diverse groups of community members and stakeholders. The AOS then formed a special ad hoc committee, the English Bird Names Committee. This group, which I believe included 10 people, met regularly for about two years.

Here's what the AOS had to say about how the committee members were selected. Quote, these individuals are well suited to weigh the concerns of users of bird names. related to maintaining ease of communication, elements of historical legacy and stability, with the needs and complexities of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Accordingly, committee members are not only experienced professional ornithologists, communicators, educators, or avid burders, but also open-minded and active listeners who are sensitive to diversity, equity, inclusion issues, and are willing to engage in constructive, collaborative, big-picture-oriented conversations.

End quote. Okay, so this super group of bird nerds put their heads together about what to do. They eventually made a recommendation to the AOS, and that brings us to the big announcement of November 1, 2023. In that announcement, the American Ornithological Society made three commitments. 1. The AOS is going to change all the eponymous bird names and any others that are offensive or exclusionary. Two, a new committee of diverse individuals will be formed to oversee this name-changing process. And three, the public is going to be involved in the process of choosing new bird names. All of this applies only to birds in North and South America, that is, within the

geographic jurisdiction of the aOS. I'll read you a couple of paragraphs from the November 1st announcement. Their wording is much more eloquent than mine would be. Quote, why are bird names important? We use names to identify and communicate about bird species. Names help us connect with and talk about birds in a meaningful way. There are many considerations for what makes a good name. For example, stability is important to the usefulness of names. The longer a name has been in use, the more likely it will be remembered, recognized, and attributed correctly. If a name is derogatory or conjures ill feelings for people, however, it detracts from the focus, appreciation, or consideration of the birds themselves. The AOS Council is committed to addressing such potential barriers to engaging a wide and

diverse set of audiences in our shared enjoyment and study of birds. End quote. And then here's another paragraph toward the end of the announcement. Quote, the AOS Council fully embraces this opportunity to remove exclusionary barriers to participation in the enjoyment of birds and, through the renaming process, to educate the public about the birds themselves, their recent population declines, and their dire need for conservation. We're excited about our commitment not just to change harmful English names, but also to develop a more inclusive process for identifying new names now and into the future.

Our next step will be to launch a pilot to work out the logistics of undertaking this significant effort and find the best path to involving experts and the public. from this pilot we will develop a thorough and effective process to launch our full campaign to change all North American eponymous bird names. We look forward to collaborating with our members, partners, and the public on this groundbreaking initiative. End quote. Now some historical people, for whom birds have been named, behaved in ways that make them obvious candidates for getting kicked to the curb. It's relatively easy to make that judgment. John Backman, for example, was an American naturalist and Lutheran minister.

His namesake birds are Backman's sparrow, Backman's warbler, probably extinct, and the black oyster catcher, hematopus backmanae, sometimes called Backman's Oystercatcher. So far, that all sounds fine, right? but John Backman was a slave owner and an anti-ab abolitionist. He's on the record for saying he thinks the intermarriage of African Americans and whites is revolting. He also wrote that the intelligence of black people is, quote, greatly inferior to that of white people and that black people are incapable of self-government. So yeah, I think you can see how bird names honoring this guy could be offensive or exclusionary. Then we have John Backman's friend in real life, the godfather of

American birding and ornithology, artist and naturalist John James Audubon. Today we have the eponymously named birds, Audubon's Oriole, and Audubon's Shearwater. The problem is old Johnny J. Audubon also owned slaves, and he desecrated the graves of Native Americans. The recent public reckoning of Audubon's misdeeds has motivated many local chapters of the Audubon Society to change their name. The local chapter here in Portland, Oregon is one of America's largest Audubon societies, and it, too, will ditch the name of Audubon in the near future. And sorry, maybe you don't live in the U.S., and you're like, what, the blithering blazes is an Audubon society? Yeah, it's a birding organization. There's the National Audubon Society, and there are many local chapters across the country. Some local chapters are more independent than others with respect to

the national organization. But in general, they offer public birding walks, classes, and kids programs. And they do a lot of conservation work. Okay, so knowing what we know about Backman and Audubon, many of us would probably vote to delete the names of these dudes from all bird common names. Yeah, get them out of here. Good riddance. But why did the American ornithological society decide to get rid of all eponymous bird names? Seems kind of extreme, doesn't it? Well, here's another quote from the November 1st statement that addresses that question. Quote, the committee acknowledged that some individuals for whom birds were named made valuable contributions to ornithology, but they ultimately considered a selective case-by-case evaluation of whether an honorific name should be retained or replaced to be intractable.

The AOS Council agrees with this assessment. Criteria for identifying which historical figures had done harm would be culturally influenced. leaving any attempted standardization inherently open to bias and disagreement. Any effort to make such judgments on past and present human figures would invariably be fraught with difficulty and negativity and become an unwelcome public and scientific distraction. So they're saying that judging 150-plus eponymous bird names on a case-by-case basis would be intractable. in other words kind of impossible at least if it's going to be done in a fair and standardized way the aOS decided to use the approach suggested by emperor palpatine from star wars

wipe them out all of them are they going to wipe out all the eponymous names tomorrow next month no my understanding is it's going to be a long process The AOS is going to do a sort of pilot run in 2024 with about 10 bird species. It'll be interesting to see which 10 they pick. Will Backman's Sparrow and Audubon's Oriole be among the first species to get new names? After that, there's about 70 to 80 bird species that will be next in line. This is my understanding. These are all species that breed primarily in North America.

that would leave about 70 more North American species and the 110 or so in South America. Here is what the AOS had to say about renaming the birds in Latin America. Quote, the AOS will also work together with ornithological societies in Central and South America to determine what organizations would be the most appropriate stewards of English common names in these regions, and will collaborate with these communities to move forward in ways aligned with their wishes. End quote. Renaming all these birds in the new world is almost certainly going to take years. It's going to be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

Now, let's consider a few of the things. the pros and cons of getting rid of all bird eponyms in this part of the world. I have to acknowledge that this whole bird renaming thing has the potential to be polarizing, because one person's pro for renaming might be another person's con. But with that said, here we go. A pro for removing eponyms is that we are getting rid of some names that are offensive or exclusionary. That's a good thing because the enjoyment of birds should be inviting to everyone. Another big pro is that we can rename birds so that their names are more descriptive and meaningful.

For example, one excellent suggestion I heard was that we rename Kurtland's Warbler, the Jack Pine Warbler. I've talked about Kurtland's Warbler a couple times before on the podcast. It's an endangered species that depends on young stands. of Jack Pine in the Midwest for its breeding habitat. So Jack Pine Warbler would be a perfectly fitting name. One con is that we're going to have to learn a bunch of new bird names. Just when you've finally learned to identify and name species like Allen's hummingbird, Wilson's Warbler, Clark's Grebe and Bonaparte's gull,

these and over 150 other species are going to have, totally different names. Maybe you can't imagine having to start all over again, learning the new names. And yes, it's going to be a bit challenging to rewire our brains to memorize dozens of new bird names, no doubt about it. But I imagine that many guidebooks and apps like Merlin and Ebert will, for a while anyway, show both the old and new names for each species. You know, as a way to sort of hold our hands through the transition, if all you can remember is the old eponymous name, you should be able to search for it in your app or in the index of your field guide. Hopefully, we'll see if it plays out like that. How about another

potential con? Some people worry that all the educational and scientific information out there will become outdated regarding the bird species with new names. Like the field guides on my bookshelf are going to be terribly outdated. And the museum displays about birds will all be fake news. They'll teach kids the wrong bird names. Scientific and conservation databases will need to be updated, and that might cause some headaches. But here's the thing.

Bird names have been changing for hundreds of years. This isn't a new phenomenon. It's just that this time around, it's happening on a bigger scale to a bunch of birds all at once, more or less, rather than just a handful each year. And as for bird field guides, man, those things are already outdated the second they hit the bookstores. Because, again, it's typical for a few birds to get new names each year for various reasons. And new species are also described. It's possible that a name or two will change between the time when a field guide is finished being written and when it first gets printed.

Just this year, the American Ornithological Society split the Northern Gosshawk into two species, the American Gosshawk and the Eurasian Gosshawk. My field guides show the old name of Northern Gosshawk. So I guess I'll have to throw them in the dumpster now. Just kidding, of course, because guidebooks with only a few quote-unquote wrong, names like this are still perfectly useful. The point is that bird taxonomy and bird names have been changing for many years. What some of us do when a few bird names change is go through our old field guides and write in the new names next to the old ones. It's kind of fun. And hey,

instead of books, how about using bird ID mobile apps on your phone? Apps like Merlin. I use Merlin way more often than physical books these days. And don't get me wrong, I love bird books. I have a lot of them. But Merlin is free. It does some super helpful things that no book could ever do, and it can be updated easily at any time. It's always in my pocket because my phone is always in my pocket. Anyway, here's a super important point. The scientific names of these birds with eponymous common names are not going to change. Not at the hands of the American Ornithological Society anyway. The AOS doesn't have the authority to change scientific names.

That awesome power is wielded by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Wow, that one rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. So, for example, Cooper's Hawk will get a new common name, but it will still have the scientific name, Accipator Cupertarii. And this brings us to a counter-argument to the concern that this bird renaming Fiesta is going to be super confusing to people using scientific bird databases and whatnot. The scientific names are not changing.

They're stable, and they'll provide links. that help connect the old common names to the new ones. That's one reason we have scientific names, right? They're globally recognized and relatively stable. Scientists and naturalists around the world can all understand which species they're talking about if they use its scientific name, never mind all the local common names that species might have.

So the bird we call an osprey in English, is Bullock Kartala in Turkey, Falco Pescatore in Italy, and Murcery in Korea. And I'm sure my pronunciations there were not great, sorry. But the point is, people in the U.S., Turkey, Italy, and Korea all know this bird by its scientific name Pandyan Halliitis. Well, scientist-type people know that name anyway, as well as nerds like you and me who care to learn such esoteric things. The big announcement happened a few weeks ago now, and we're seeing how people are responding

to it. The decision by the American Ornithological Society to rename all these birds has been, from what I can gather, mostly well-received. It's supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the president of the American Birding Association, famous birders and makers of field guides, David Sibley and Ken Kaufman, and many others. Nate Swick, the host of the popular American birding podcast, had this to say. Quote, from my perspective, I've always thought eponyms were just bad names. They don't tell you anything useful about the bird or point to a bird.

an interesting aspect of natural history. Yes, it will be a challenge to differentiate some of them, but if names are a tool for facilitating understanding about birds or biodiversity, then the current eponyms are less than useless in that regard. Moral reasons aside, bird names are so much more useful when they're descriptive in some way, and we all know that there are plenty of bad bird names out there. I think we should embrace the opportunity to fix this problem, even if some are less than thrilled about the reason for doing so. End quote. Random people on the internet had some things to say too. I got on Reddit to see what the buzz is around this topic. There were plenty of positive responses there. For example, one

person wrote, quote, I for one look forward to the name changes and learning and using the new names. It brings something new and exciting to the hobby of birding, end quote. But as you can imagine, there are some people who are not happy about the upcoming bird name changes. Here's a fun selection of comments I found on Reddit. One person wrote, Changing 152 names at once is utterly ridiculous. Do they think we're going to memorize this stuff? Will anyone pay attention to it? I won't. Another one reads, I completely oppose it. It is worth honoring the individuals who first sought to scientifically describe these birds,

regardless of their actions outside of naturalism. Individuals in the AOS have a scorched earth political agenda, and the birds are collateral damage. Shameful. Then this person said, Rather than the birds being someone's vanity plate, this renaming has become someone's vanity plate. an asinine decision to add a diversity medal to someone's sash of holier than thou.

As soon as the word problematic appears, it has nothing to do with the birds. This is someone vomiting their current inclusivity argument onto ornithology. And finally, we have someone who said, Who put these jokers in charge of bird names? Wow, such anger. But pushback like this was inevitable, right? The American Ornithological Society had to know that a significant percentage of people out there were going to be using lots of angry face emojis in response to the naming decision. One way I look at this whole thing is, in 100 years, the world is going to be populated by all new people.

None of us here today is likely to still be alive in 100 years. Bird enthusiasts of the future will just learn the bird names as they are in the year 21-23, and that will be that, just like we learned the names as they were presented to us, even though many of those had actually been different in the past. But now that I think about it, the way things are going, will there even be any birds in 100 years? I mean, right? Sorry, I guess that's a morbid thing to say.

Perhaps a more cheerful vision of the future, at least from the perspective of birds, is that there won't be any people in 100 years. Maybe humans will be gone, birds and all the other animals will rejoice in our downfall, and none of this eponymous name stuff will matter. Birds will just be flapping around, doing their thing, happy and completely nameless. Anyway, we were talking earlier about pros and cons. One pro is that the public will get to weigh in on the new names for our birds. That's pretty cool.

Who knows what that's going to look like? Maybe the AOS will put out polls for us to vote in? We'll see, I guess. But this whole public input thing, if not handled carefully, could end up being more of a con. Who can forget the Booty McBoatface debacle of 2016? Remember that? The Natural Environment Research Council in the UK put out an online poll asking members of the public to come up with a name for a new polar research ship.

People being people, there were a bunch of cheeky names among the 32,000 that were suggested. And in the end, the name Booty McBoatface won with 33% of the vote. Fantastic. But the Natural Environment Research Council decided instead to name, the new ship, the RRS, Sir David Attenborough. How about that for an eponym? But seriously, who doesn't love David Attenborough? As an interesting aside, there's actually a connection between the name Bodie McBoatface

and birds, because a few years earlier in 2013, there was an owl at a small zoo in Northern England that went viral on the internet. The owl's name is Hootie McAwlface. Hooty is a southern boobook, a species that's widespread across Australia. Sadly, there are no eponymously named owls in North America. Because if there was, we could, with a little enthusiastic public input, rename one of our owls something as awesome as Hootie McAwlface. So, what does that?

do I think about the Great Bird Eponym Purge of 2023? Well, you can probably guess what I think from what I've said already and my general tone throughout. I completely oppose it. I think it's utterly ridiculous. It's a shameful, asinine decision. Oops, no, no, wait, wait, strike that. I mixed up some of the lines in my script here. What I meant to say was, I completely support it! I do believe that getting rid of eponyms will help to make birding welcoming to a wider and more diverse group of people. On top of that, we have an unprecedented opportunity to give a large number of birds

meaningful names that tell us more about what they look or sound like or where they live or what habitats they use. And to be honest, having to learn a bunch of birds. of new names isn't a con for me. It's an exciting challenge that I look forward to. But I know not everyone will feel that way, and I can empathize with you if it feels like it's going to be overwhelming. And sure, in some ways, I'll miss the old names of birds I love. Barrow's Golden Eye, Vox's Swift, Swainson's Thrush, Stellar's Jay, Bewick's Wren. But I'll do my best to embrace the new names when they come. As long as they don't suck, the new names better not suck, you guys.

But hey, if they do, maybe we'll have no one to blame but ourselves, because there's going to be, again, an unprecedented opportunity for common folks like you and me to have a say in what the new names will be. And that is just so cool. We can help to give our birds names that are evocative, meaningful, helpful for identification, hopefully, and who knows, maybe even a little poetic. And that brings us to the fun part. Ever since the November 1st announcement by the American Ornithological Society, people on social media and elsewhere have been offering their suggestions for new bird names. You know, in the spirit of Bodie McBoatface.

And you know me, there's no way I could resist getting in on that action. to make up some silly names for birds. So here are some suggestions. First up, we have Harris's Hawk, Parabudio unisinctus. This raptor lives in deserts and savannas in the American Southwest, all the way down to Chile and Argentina. Perhaps the coolest and most outstanding feature of Parabudio unisynctus is that it's a highly social species.

These birds hunt cooperatively in packs, like little feathered wolves. So a couple of possible names for this species could be Wolf in Hawk's clothing, or tricolored mob hawk. Next up is Clark's Nutcracker, Nusafrega, Columbiana. This gray and black bird is a member of the Crow and Jay family, Corvety. It lives in the high mountains of western North America, where it eats mostly the seeds of pine trees, a.k.a. Pine Nusufrega. Columbiana stores thousands of pine seeds in caches to be retrieved at a later date. Maybe we could name this bird the Montane

pine nut smuggler, or the gray pine cone gremlin. Now let's take a staff. at Backman's Sparrow, Pusillaeus. It used to be called the Pine Woods Sparrow, and that's a pretty good name because this bird breeds in mature open pine forests in the southeastern U.S. It's a secretive bird with a lovely little song and streaky brown, gray, and rust-colored plumage. I suppose we could just go back to calling it the Pine Woods Sparrow. Or we could rename this bird something fun, something like Southern Skulking Sparrow, or the Melodious Ghost Sparrow. Next we have Brewer's Blackbird, Euphagus Sianosopheles.

Males of this species are black with an iridescent sheen, and their piercing eyes have yellowish-white irises. Uphagus Sianocephalus is a widespread species in North America, found in many open habitats. And you see them foraging on the side of the road, and on sidewalks, and in parking lots. These clever blackbirds are known to pluck dead bugs off the bumpers and grills of parked cars. So the new name of this bird could be the glossy black asphalt prowler. Or how about the pale-eyed parking lot pirate? And in case you think my names here are unrealistically long, just know that there are real birds out there with names like

the slender-billed scimitar babbler and white-bellied go-away bird. The last bird I shall rename today is Hutton's Virio, Virio Huttonai. This is a small greenish-gray songbird of Western North America, Mexico, and Guatemala. It sounds like this. Some have described that song as monotonous and unmusical. Virio Huttonai looks a lot like another small songbird in North America, the ruby-crowned kinglet. But the weird thing is, these two birds are in different families, so they are in no way closely related.

Perhaps we could rename Vereo Hutnye, giving it the common name, tone-deaf kinglet mimic. Or how about the unmusical bird that I'm telling you for the last time is definitely not a ruby-crown kinglet, Vireo? So there you go. Those are some new bird names for your consideration. You could probably come up with much better and funnier names than I can, but that's what I got for today.

In any case, eponymous, honorific bird names in the Western Hemisphere are going away, like a white-bellied go-away bird. Not immediately, but in the coming years. So we have time to prepare and time to get used to the idea. Maybe this will happen to English bird names in the rest of the time. of the world too. If so, the eponym dictionary of bird names sitting on my shelf is going to become a relic of the past. And remember when I said earlier that I would love to have a new bird species named after me? I was just kidding. For the record, I would like to retract that statement. I'd be much happier if each bird species had a name that reflects its own special and

memorable qualities. And I sincerely hope that the new names will make it easier for people of all backgrounds to feel excited about joining the birding community. Thank you for listening to the podcast today. I know your time and attention are precious things, so thank you for being here. This is episode 87. I thought it was going to be a short one, but I should have known better. So, how do you feel about all these birds being renamed? Are you filled with white-hot rage and an urge to make vitriolic comments on the internet? Or are you supportive and totally pumped for it?

Or maybe you're just like, eh, either way is fine. Makes no difference to me. I don't really like birds, actually. I just listen to this podcast because the host is really monotonous and boring, so it helps me fall asleep. You know what does make a difference? To me, Ivan Philipson,

the support of my patrons on Patreon. These are my listeners who contribute to the science of birds. They make an enormous difference by allowing me to keep putting these episodes out for free to the world. So thank you, thank you to my awesome patrons. The latest additions to this group of excellent human beings, my newest supporters, are

Carrie Flood Melon, Pink Jade, and Lisa. Thank you guys so much for becoming paid supporters of the podcast. If you too would like to be an excellent human being, you can check out my Patreon page at patreon.com slash science of birds. There's also a link in the show notes in your podcast app. You can shoot me an email if you have some info or comments you'd like to share with me, or if you'd like to share some fun bird names that you'd you'd like to share some fun bird names that you've come up with to replace

the eponyms. Or maybe your email will just be a string of angry face emojis and exclamation points. I don't know. In any case, send your emails to Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com. Again, this is episode 87.

You can check out the show notes for the episode along with some photos of species I talked about today on the Science of Birds website, science of birds.com. This is Ivan Philipson, wishing you a peaceful day. Cheers.