Now they're coming after birds?

Bird names are going to change for more "inclusive names".

Surprise, surprise, now apparently birds are being targeted for their -isms.

Recently, USA Today released an article detailing how young, more inclusive ornithologists are leading the charge in renaming “problematic birds”.

The charge seems to be led by the American Ornithologist Society, as noted in the article:

Dozens of bird species in the United States and Canada will get "imaginative" new names that reflect their traits and habitats rather than the names of people, the American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday.

The society plans to remove all human names from the common names for birds within its jurisdiction, to create a more inclusive environment for people of diverse backgrounds interested in bird-watching and ornithology. The public process, yet to be fully defined, will include 70 to 80 birds in the U.S. and Canada, the society stated.

Following years of controversy over bird names linked to people with racist and genocidal histories, the society's decision thrills ornithologists and scientists who supported a campaign to name birds for themselves.

Apparently some bird watchers are too offended to watch birds because of their names? This may sound absurd, but the article includes Black bird watchers who seem to be part of a group who wish for more “inclusive” names.

This sounds a bit like how outdoor activities are far too white and need to be made more inclusive, because of course hiking is related to race, right?

Of course it is. I didn’t realize white people have been gatekeeping me from walking outside. 🤡

And so just like with other aspects of modern life, it seems that birds are getting a makeover for modern sensibilities, with many of these more enlightened, young scientists patting themselves on the back against transgressions of the past.

But like with many attempts at so-called inclusivity this need to rename birds seems to be a non-issue made into a serious, life-altering phenomenon.

Now, I haven’t done much bird-watching myself, and to be quite honest that may be a greater problem for moderns than supposedly problematic bird names. Many of us live lives so separate from nature that we can’t even tell common birds apart. So how likely is it for a typical person to see issues with bird names if they likely can’t even tell a raven or a crow apart from one another?

Again, this seems to be a select problem since most people are likely to be ignorant of the world of birds, so comments such as these appear rather hollow:

"It’s a major change in how we think about bird names," said Sushma Reddy, secretary of the society and the Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the University of Minnesota. "We came to the decision that we really want bird names to be about birds."

Reddy should know that we’re too busy thinking about the Roman Empire to think about bird names!

And if people can’t even discern what birds are out there, would they have any better knowledge about which birds are named after “problematic” individuals?

For instance, would you be able to figure out who this Ross or Bachman person is given the following names:

New bird names will favor more descriptive names like the blue-footed booby or red-headed woodpecker rather than nebulous names like Ross' goose or Bachman's sparrow that give no clues about how to identify the bird. 

And here I am just waiting for “booby” to be renamed “chest-bearer”… This again, also relies on whether the common bird watcher will be able to recognize that what they are looking at is in fact a booby, rather than any other species.

It also doesn’t help that some people can easily consider the term “booby” problematic due to the fact that it may be a slang term for stupid (of course, if Wikipedia is to be believed):

The English name "booby" was possibly based on the Spanish slang term bobo, meaning "stupid",^[6] as these tame birds had a habit of landing on board sailing ships, where they were easily captured and eaten. Owing to this, boobies are often mentioned as having been caught and eaten by shipwrecked sailors, notably William Bligh of the Bounty and his adherents during their famous voyage after being set adrift by Fletcher Christian and his followers.

At the point that any name can be deemed offensive the doors are opened to push for renaming of anything because someone feels even remotely slighted. Note that the article mentions that all honorific human names given to birds are being done to remove any contentious issues as to who may be deemed “problematic”, so not only are they getting rid of racists or white supremacists, but they may even be getting rid of names for individuals who may serve as exemplars that these woke scientists are striving to include. So much for honoring individuals right?

When detailing why bird names are being changed the USA Today article provides, what I would consider, a rather lackluster explanation for these changes:

In 2018, college student Robert Driver proposed renaming McKown's longspur. The small bird that lives on shortgrass prairies in the Central United States was named for John P. McKown, who first collected a specimen of the species in 1851. That was before he fought in the Seminole Indian War in Florida in 1856 and 1857, before he participated in an expedition against Mormons in Utah in 1858 and before he became a general in the Confederate Army in 1861, according to the Central Arkansas Library System. Driver's renaming proposal was rejected, to the dismay of many birders. 

In the spring of 2020, major events sparked a national outcry, protests over racism and police brutality, and a renewed focus on racism in the U.S. Two of those occurred on May 25. A white woman in Central Park called the police and falsely accused Black birder Christian Cooper of threatening her after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. Then in Minneapolis, police killed George Floyd.

There are two serious issues with the justifications provided. With the former McKown’s longspur seems to be named due to the fact that he was the first to collect a specimen from this species. Irrespective of his eventual history, it seems rather apt that a bird would be named after it’s alleged discoverer. And again, it’s not as if many lay people, or even bird watchers will known of the history of McKown, but by renaming the bird to remove McKown’s name ornithologists are committing the same issues that have occurred with confederate statues where not only is history being removed but the context of that history is being removed as well. Why not provide information in regards to McKown, whether problematic or not, so that people are aware of the man’s history? All this does is make people more ignorant of the world around them.

You no longer will know who discovered the bird, and you won’t know the history of its namesake. All you’ll know is that the bird is X because it displays X.

I can’t even figure out what the issue is with the second justification aside from cries of racism tangential to birds. The bird watcher argument doesn’t even make sense unless the woman just happened to notice a bird named after a white supremacist and used that as some calling card to go about her diatribe, and as far as I am aware there was more going on with the story than what the mainstream discussed.

But here’s a real kicker in the article, because I found the following excerpt to be some sort of struggle session where an old-school ornithologists has his views changed by the new young ones entering into the field:

Kaufman, who has been in the bird business nearly his entire life, was among those initially reluctant to support changing dozens of bird names.

"It’s easy to get set in your ways," he said. "I believed in the value of stability. Having stable names makes it easier for people to communicate." He's also seen the mass confusion among bird-watchers when species have been split or combined for taxonomic purposes. 

But after the 2020 rejection of Driver's proposal, Kaufman was struck by the "vocal outcry, mostly from younger ornithologists and bird conservationists." He began to be persuaded during a conversation with two of those ornithologists, Jordan Rutter and Gabriel Foley, who launched their Bird Names for Birds campaign in 2020.

Rutter and Foley argued some of the bird names were essentially verbal Confederate monuments, he said. "At a time when the bird community was trying to become more inclusive, it seems like that maybe would be a barrier."

After talking to dozens of fellow birders of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, he said he was convinced renaming was the best option.

There’s more to the excerpt, but again I’m rather curious how much of an issue this really is, or if this is just a nonissue that a vocal minority has seized upon.

The challenge we are facing in our need to right the wrongs of the past is that it leaves us ignorant of what the past really was. It doesn’t provide any way to learn about alleged prior transgressions, or to understand the context in which a bird may be named. It’s also ignorant for these individuals to assume that they are so enlightened that their naming now will bear no problems in the future. It’s the arrogance of moderns to assume that they have everything figured out- if only people will just listen to their constant yelling.

But I also think there’s more to this story, and something that has popped up quite often in other aspects of our culture.

That is, part of me feels that this whole attempt to rename these birds is just another example of the modern proclivity to be lazy, because how many of these young ornithologists are out there actively seeking to discover new birds, to which they can name however they please?

Would you rather go out there and dedicate time and effort into discovering the unknowns, or would you rather spend your time “reimaging” things that other people have discovered and stamping your name onto other people’s works?

One of the greatest challenges we are facing as a society isn’t anything racist or sexist, but it’s a lack of creativity. It’s a lack of willing to go out there and learn something new, explore the world, and have your perspective changed.

Instead, we are living in a world that is reactive; that seeks to find issues where there may be none rather than creating novel ideas or concepts.

Consider how many movies, video games, or comic books that have come out recently that are all remakes or sequels that no one asked for, which only end up far worse than their predecessors or original IP. It’s the same idea, where creating new IPs and new works from the ground up is far more difficult than taking something established and “reimaging” it within a modern context. It’s far easier to react and “reimagine” than it is to create.

And so part of me wonders how many of these young, more enlightened ornithologists are just taking the lazy way out by renaming things the way they see fit, and in doing so overriding the work that has come from researchers and scientists of the past.

Credit is provided for doing hard work, not for taking the lazy way out and finding names problematic.

Here’s a picture of a Kookaburra, mainly because I keep getting videos of these birds pushed onto me. Image from Wikimedia.

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