Dear CoBirders:
Let's remember the list's focus on topics pertinent to Colorado birding and
Colorado birds. I feel like this discussion has ranged away from that.
Anyone have any birds to report? :-)
Thank you,
David Suddjian
CoBirds list moderator
On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 1:48 PM Evan Wilder
I must be missing something here. How would it be imposing colonialism on other countries by changing the names to descriptive terms that can actually be translated? While “Townsend’s Warbler” means next to nothing to English speakers, “Chipe de Townsend” must mean even less to Spanish speakers.
And while we may argue whether they should rename a specific bird that
spends its time partly in Canada/U.S. and partly in Latin America, that
really comes back to the question over who is vested with the authority to
name birds at all and how that came to be - why was a certain organization
The AOU states on their website that they are focusing only on bird names
in the U.S. and Canada right now, and do not have a plan to change Latin
American bird names without the involvement of Latin American
ornithologists and organizations.
Diana Beatty
El Paso County
On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at
So we change the name of Swainson’s Warbler.
Wintering Swainson’s Warblers are in the Caribbean and southern Mexico and also
central Jamaica.
How are we not imposing our values on other countries where these birds are all
addressed by their ENGLISH common names?
And to quote Jon Dunn: “The
It is an interesting article. It does not address the AOU decision per se,
but instead is addressing some published works of scientists around the
interest of species name revisions, which could include lots of different
ideas about how and where those are happening, for what reasons, and
whether
And I would answer in rebuttal that anyone wanting to be fully informed on this topic should read “Policing the scientific lexicon: The new colonialism?” by Rohan Pethiyagoda (Sri Lanka) which can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/5u45569rA partial quote: “Here, writing from the perspective of a
Jared Del Rosso published a good addition to this discussion on The
Conversation: —
https://theconversation.com/why-dozens-of-north-american-bird-species-are-getting-new-names-every-name-tells-a-story-217886
An interesting point he made: "all eponymous names imply human ownership
over
Thanks to Don Jones for sharing a link from Kenn Kaufman that summarizes
some of Kenn's recent research on eponymous names and the history of
ornithology. The report provides objective historical facts that most
birders, like me, never realized. Each of us can draw our own conclusions
from his
