NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {A} pparently, wars in Israel and Ukraine, mass starvation in Yemen, slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, and chaos on our southern border are so well under control that we should be spending time and energy changing bird names. I wrote two years ago how those meddling powers-that-be at the American Ornithological Society wanted to change the monikers of any birds named after people. The Society claimed this was necessary because many of these people supposedly had connections to slavery — or were just white men. According to NPR, we’re now moving ahead with those name changes, continuing our gleeful scrubbing of all history that makes social-justice activists uncomfortable. Terrible judgment abounds in NPR’s essay, by Nell Greenfieldboyce, and also in the broader treatment by woke naturalists, but I quibble with three main points.

First, Greenfieldboyce says that, according to the society’s president, “concerns about injustice wasn’t a traditionally accepted reason for changing bird names,” but

that really started to change in 2020, when police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. On that same day, a white woman in Central Park called the police on black birder Christian Cooper, claiming he was threatening her.

Yes, everyone who witnessed these events immediately thought, “Bewick’s wren is the cause of racial strife in America.”

Birding is probably one of the least exclusionary, lowest-cost activities in the world. You can bird literally anywhere and with no equipment. Though it can certainly be fun to travel places and see various species, you’d be amazed at what you see simply by looking out your back door (or the window of your apartment, or by walking down the street). Sure, nice binoculars and fancy scopes can help you see the birds better, but simply hearing them also counts for your life list. And as I wrote previously:

My family goes birding almost daily, and we’ve been on numerous birding expeditions in multiple states. We’ve met people from all walks of life and of all ages. Almost to a man (yes, yes, and women, too), they are excited to know what we’ve seen, to share birding tips, and to impart practical wisdom. We weren’t there counting the number of blacks, Asians, or Hispanics — we were all too busy marveling at a rare Mississippi kite, or sharing a scope with someone who needs a purple gallinule for her life list.

Getting rid of eponymous bird names is a fool’s errand and will cause more division than unity. And even if NPR won’t take the time to find dissenters to the upcoming changes, they certainly exist. I know they will be ignored, and it is deeply disheartening to know that this beautiful pastime has turned into a social-justice playground.

Another glaring problem in this supposedly reported story is that Greenfieldboyce doesn’t include any quotations from opposing parties. You’d think that no one objected to the upcoming changes, and that all birders have become enlightened, open-minded do-gooders who’ve seen the error of their ways. Even if you’ve been in the birding business for 60 years, like field-guide author Kenn Kaufman, you aren’t safe from ideological mobs. In a passage that reeks of arm-twisting, Greenfieldboyce describes Kaufman’s apparent change of heart:

He says he initially opposed the idea of changing so many names, but has come around. “It’s going to feel like a bother to some people, but I think it’s actually an exciting opportunity,” says Kaufman. “It’s an exciting opportunity to give these birds names that celebrate them — rather than some person in the past.”

Which leads us to the third problem: You can describe birds only in so many ways. “Names that celebrate them” is both trite and unhelpful. Lots of birds are just brown and white, or buff and gray, or yellow with some black streaks. Yes, you absolutely can use those descriptors when looking for the bird, but to use them in its name would be create awkward redundancies and confusion. Imagine coming up with a new name for Wilson’s warbler. At this rate, it would be something like “Beady-eyed, black-capped, slightly yellow warbler.” Or Anna’s hummingbird: “Flitty green-gold iridescent hummingbird.” Absolutely unseemly, and a waste of paper, ink, and breath.

Or consider this quote from Greenfieldboyce:

[Biologist Erica] Nol says she recently was visiting some salt marshes this summer and saw a common bird there that’s called Wilson’s Snipe, which has a long bill and engages in dramatic displays such as flying in high circles, which produces a whistling sound as air flows over specialized feathers. “And I thought, what a terrible name,” she says. “I mean, Wilson was the father of modern ornithology in North America, but this bird has so many other evocative characteristics.” [Emphasis added.]

In fact, it’s not a terrible name. It differentiates this bird very nicely from the similar-looking American woodcock. Furthermore, the detail that “Wilson was the father of modern ornithology in North America” means something. News flash: People sin. That universal fact should not be a reason for wiping their names off the map and ignoring their legacy. By erasing these bits of history, we are losing many things, not the least of which are stories.

Consider the wonderful book by Stephen Moss, Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler. The premise of the entire work is that Moss wondered who Mrs. Moreau was and why a very rare bird in the middle of nowhere was named after her. This sent him off on the adventure of a lifetime and revealed to him (and us, through his book) a beautiful love story. Without Mrs. Moreau, we’d have no book and no story, nothing connecting us with the past and giving us joy in the future.

The removal of human names from bird monikers is also stunting our conversation. By removing them, we’re not celebrating the birds, we’re only viewing them as a collection of biological parts. We’re taking away something to discuss, a way to forge understanding between us and people of the past. Historical realities are there whether we like them or not, and ignoring them makes our conversation poorer and our culture sicker.

Thankfully, birding guides printed before this absurdity still retain the proper bird names, so those of us with some common sense will still happily say we’ve flirted with Anna’s hummingbird, espied Cooper’s hawk, and chatted amiably with Wilson’s warbler.