When I first moved to Texas from Australia, I didn’t give all the new birds’ names much thought. The only thing that did occur to me was that some names were much more helpful than others — bird names like Yellow-rumped Warbler told me exactly what to look for! And when I was learning a whole new hemisphere’s worth of birds and their names, that was very much appreciated!
Fast forward a few years, and The Incident at Central Park happened in May 2020. A Black birder, Christian Cooper, had the police weaponized against him by a white woman who refused to follow the posted signs and put her dog on a leash. The outright racism of this event, caught on video by Christian, shocked a huge portion of the birding community, myself included. With all the privilege that is inherent to being a white, straight, able-bodied birder, I had never experienced such viscous hatred while out birding, and was horrified that it could happen to a fellow birder who was just out to enjoy the birds.
What followed in the week afterwards could not have been predicted. Young Black birders banded together and held the online #BlackBirdersWeek — celebrating the joys of being a Black birder, and facilitating awareness-raising conversations about racism in birding and the outdoors. I learnt that there are many Black birders, and they experience racism all the time when trying to go birding. (There’s more about #BlackBirdersWeek, including links to the events, on our Racism in Birding page.) It was, in fact, #BlackBirdersWeek that gave me a roadmap for Birdability Week, without which we would not be a non-profit organization today.
I’d met the amazing Dr J. Drew Lanham two years earlier and heard him talk about Black birders having different ‘range maps’ to white birders. He sparked something inside me, but it wasn’t until #BlackBirdersWeek that a fire was ignited. On the Friday of #BlackBirdersWeek I — quite unexpectedly — found myself in tears of passion, trying to explain to a white birding friend why I was so amped up about this Week. Everybody should be able to go birding as easily as I can. It isn’t right that this isn’t how it is. And we white birders should be doing everything we can to fix this.
Eventually, a system developed. As new species were discovered, official names were given to them in scientific journals, and naming birds after scientists or discoverers became commonplace. Since it was considered impolite to name a bird after oneself, if one discovered a new species, they would name it after a friend. John James Audubon frequently did this, and he was frequently rewarded for his kindness.
This honor code has survived to the present. As a result, in 1938, British Ornithologists’ Club Bulletin received a dispatch from Reginald Moreau, an African civil servant who enjoyed spending much of his leisure time bird watching in the wild. In it, he named a recently discovered warbler after his wife, Winifred.
One of the many birds whose appearance has inspired names based on religious or noble figures is the Mandarin duck. One common songbird’s vivid red feathers were believed to mimic the robes and caps of Roman Catholic cardinals, while the emperor penguin’s enormous stature in relation to other members of its species is the source of its name.
“They believed it was better than other ducks because of its lovely feathers,” British natural historian Stephen Moss, author of “Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: The Story of the Names of the Birds (Faber The book lives up to its title, detailing the numerous ways English-speaking ornithologists have named birds over the centuries. It is based on Moss’ lifelong passion of bird watching.
Ornithologists continue to find, and name, new birds. A new species of boubou with dark feathers was found in Africa in 2010 and named after David Willard, the Field Museum of Chicago’s collections manager at the time. He recently reminisced via email that it was a “great honor,” but one he never anticipated. “I was aware that colleagues were reporting a novel species, but I never inquired as to the proposed nomenclature.” They kept the secret well. He didn’t find out about Willard’s sooty boubou until friends showed up at the museum to throw him a party.
Freya McGregor, OTR/L, CIG is Birdability’s Director of Programs and Outreach, and an occupational therapist. Birding since childhood, her ‘dodgy’ knee often creates an accessibility challenge for her, and she is passionate about enabling all birders and potential future birders to enjoy birding and nature as much as she does. You can follow her on Instagram @the.ot.birder
We don’t call Hooded Mergansers “Cock Robins” anymore. And when was the last time you referred to a Pileated Woodpecker as a “Black Woodcock”? Both those old school names would be really confusing nowadays. Mergansers aren’t robins, and woodpeckers aren’t woodcocks. So the name was changed, to ensure no one was confused.
Let’s make sure that the people who are celebrated by the birding community are clear to the rest of the world. Additionally, let us ensure that novice birdwatchers are not perplexed as to which bird is which. It’s a simple method to guarantee that birdwatching is genuinely open to and accessible to all individuals!
One could not have predicted what transpired the next week. Young Black birders banded together and held the online #BlackBirdersWeek — celebrating the joys of being a Black birder, and facilitating awareness-raising conversations about racism in birding and the outdoors. I discovered that many Black birders encounter racism frequently when attempting to go birdwatching. (There’s more about #BlackBirdersWeek, including links to the events, on our Racism in Birding page. ) It was, in fact, #BlackBirdersWeek that gave me a roadmap for Birdability Week, without which we would not be a non-profit organization today.
That’s when I heard about the efforts of Bird Names for Birds. A small group of folks were petitioning the American Ornithological Society’s North American Classification Committee to rename all the birds that were named after a person. As it turns out, and as the folks behind Bird Names for Birds have uncovered, many of these people were not nice people. (“Not nice” is probably too nice. Many of these people supported — or actually enacted — really racist acts, like John Bachman preaching about how inferior he felt Black people were to white people. Or John Kirk Townsend, who dug up Native American graves to collect their skulls to “prove” that the white colonizers were superior to the Indigenous people.)
FAQ
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