Bird names
Chris J. Durden
drdn at mail.utexas.edu
Tue Jun 8 11:44:05 EDT 1999
At 06:24 8/06/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Bird names are in the same or worse disarray.
>Every systematic whim (or even systematic sense) gets reflected in the
>latest bird book. I would guess that probably half of the bird books
>published in the last 10-15 years adopted the Sibley classification
>which shuffled orders and families of birds with abandon.
>Half of the remaining adhere to the "Wetmore" sequence of families
>(Sparrows last) and half have adopted the "Crows" last sequence---on the
>notion that since crows are so smart they represent the highest form of
>bird life. I'll match our parrot against any crow, but no one thinks of
>a Parrot-last sequence.
>
>Common names remain fairly stable until some group comes along and tries
>to standardize them. Then an old generation of birders struggles to
>learn Yellow-rumped Warbler and Green-backed Heron, while their younger
>field companions have to guess what is meant by an occasional lapse into
>Myrtle Warbler or Green Heron. During the 1970's there was a profound
>move to lump at the species level based on evidence of interbreeding (or
>introgression), while the biodiversity movement of the 1990's has
>emphasized splitting again.
>
>Now the latest nonsense is the generic renaming of familiar birds such
>as Chickadees which are now no longer Parus.
>
>It's a good thing there aren't as many butterfly systematists.
>
>I think that the lesson (which I learned from the book SWISS FAMILY
>ROBINSON) is that names are supposed to be convenient contrivances for
>communication. There is NO reason that names have to reflect every
>taxonomic change----there are numbers and diagrams which can do that
>much better than names.
>
>Mike Gochfeld
>
Well put!
........Chris Durden
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