{"id":7821,"date":"2020-11-25T09:45:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T09:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7821"},"modified":"2020-11-25T09:45:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T09:45:57","slug":"the-naming-of-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/11\/25\/the-naming-of-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"The naming of birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Monday's NAEE news round-up<\/a> reported, there's a new craze sweeping the woker \u2013 or should that be wokier? *\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 parts of North America. \u00a0This is to rename birds. \u00a0As a blog<\/a> on audubon.org (essential reading) notes:<\/p>\n

\"North America's most important ornithology organization announced it would remove the bird world's own verbal monument to that history. The McCown\u2019s Longspur\u2014a bird named after<\/a> John P. McCown, an amateur avian collector who fought to defend slavery as a Confederate general and went to war against\u00a0<\/strong><\/b>native tribes\u2014is now named the Thick-billed Longspur.\"<\/p>\n

It goes on:<\/p>\n

\"That decision,\u00a0<\/strong><\/b>one year after the American Ornithological Society (AOS) rejected an initial proposal to change the name, may end up being the easy part. The group\u2019s North American Classification Committee (NACC) now expects, and says it welcomes, a spate of further name-change proposals as many\u00a0in the birding community reevaluate scientific and conservation history through an anti-racist lens. \u00a0We\u2019re really clear that we want to listen to diverse voices, especially those of marginalized groups who haven\u2019t necessarily had a seat at the table until now, and work carefully towards a modernization of our nomenclature for birds,\u201d says Irby Lovette, a member of the AOS\u2019s North American Classification Committee and professor at Cornell University. \u201cWhere that\u2019s going to lead, I\u2019m not exactly sure, but it\u2019s going to be a process.\u201d\"<\/p>\n

and:<\/p>\n

\"The Bird Names for Birds<\/a> campaign, which gained support from more than<\/a> 2,500 petition signers in July and August as well as an endorsement<\/a>from the American Bird Conservancy, says that all of the nearly 150 North American eponyms and honorifics should be revised to make birding more inclusive. Some of these bird names enshrine figures<\/a> who embraced racist and colonialist ideas and actions\u00a0(including naturalist icon<\/a> John James Audubon). Furthermore, many birds were \u201cdiscovered\u201d at a time when Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) were rarely if ever credited for their\u00a0knowledge, and white forces in the United States were clearing\u00a0lands of their original inhabitants and enslaving Black people. Very few bird names honor non-white people or women. \"The history of ornithology is, in many ways, a microcosm of the history and the harms of Western science,\" says its website<\/a>, where it documents many stories behind\u00a0eponymous figures. \"<\/p>\n

Just so. Needless to say, in typical condescending, speciesist fashion, the birds have not been consulted.<\/p>\n

I fear that anyone in the UK tempted to follow in their earnest footsteps may well struggle. \u00a0The number of birds that are associated with the UK which are somebody's<\/em> is very small as we had the good sense to describe them as they are rather than after someone who was on the wrong side in the civil war, or who had shares in the East India Company, or whose family profited from slaving. \u00a0There are a few candidates, however:<\/p>\n

Cory's Shearwater \u00a0\/ \u00a0Leach's Petrel \u00a0\/ \u00a0Bewick's Swan \u00a0\/ \u00a0Montagu's Harrier \u00a0\/ \u00a0Temminck's Stint \u00a0\/ \u00a0Wilson's Phalarope \u00a0\/ \u00a0Sabine's Gull \u00a0\/ \u00a0Pallas's Sandgrouse \u00a0\/ \u00a0Cetti's Warbler<\/p>\n

I'd only heard of 3 of these before I looked them up. \u00a0So! \u00a0Come on you activistas, I've done the research on the birds, now for the people. \u00a0Just who were Cory, Leach, Bewick, Montagu, Temminck, Wilson, Sabine, Pallas and Cetti? \u00a0And what dastardly deeds did they do in their dark despicable pasts? \u00a0We need to know.<\/p>\n

Over to you.<\/p>\n

............................................<\/p>\n

*<\/strong> My USA-based search engine wanted me to write \"joker \/ wonkier\" instead of \"woker \/ workier\". \u00a0 Obviously it's well behind the [New York] Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Monday's NAEE news round-up reported, there's a new craze sweeping the woker \u2013 or should that be wokier? *\u00a0\u2013 parts of North America. \u00a0This is to rename birds. \u00a0As a blog on audubon.org (essential reading) notes: \"North America's most...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}