Monday Bird Report

McCown’s Longspur. Photo by Aaron_Maizlish/Carolinabirds.org

July 6, 2020 — A “Bird Names for Birds” campaign has started over the last couple of weeks to persuade the American Ornithologists Society to change the common names of birds named after people.

The impetus was McCown’s Longspur, a bird of the short-grass prairie named after John P. McCown, a professional bird-specimen collector who in 1851 shot a bird new to science and sent it back east to be described and named.

The honor went to him, and McCown’s Longspur is still there, its habitat diminishing but its place in The Sibley Guide to Birds secure, along with Chestnut-collared, Smith’s, and Lapland Longspur.

But the McCown name posed a problem. During the Civil War, McCown was a commander for the side that fought to break the United States in two and to form a new country where it would be legal to own other human beings.

As Audubon Magazine explains, the first request to change the name of McCown’s Longspur came in 2018. It was revived again this year, as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the AOU has promised to reconsider it.

But it also led a number of people to wonder why birds should be named after people to begin with. Chestnut-collared Longspur describes the bird, as does Red-headed Woodpecker and Double-crested Cormorant and scores of others. Why shouldn’t all birds have bird names?

Thus “Bird Names for Birds.” (@BirdNames4Birds on Twitter.)

On June 22, 182 people in the bird world sent a letter to the American Ornithological Society citing McCown’s as an example of a bird name that should be changed to make ornithology more inclusive: “Barriers in ornithology for Black, Indigenous, and people of color are not limited to membership fees. There are significant isolating and demeaning reminders of oppression, slavery, and genocide that reside within many of the English common names attached to birds in North America.”

It was followed by a petition, which reportedly has more than 1,000 signatures. It’s main point:

“Many common bird names in North America commemorate men who participated in a colonial, genocidal, and heavily exploitative period of history. These antiquated common names are harmful, unnecessary, and should be changed in the interest of a more welcoming ornithology. Traditionally, the American Ornithological Society (AOS) has overseen taxonomic and nomenclatural changes. We urge AOS to acknowledge the issue of eponymous and honorific common names, to outline a plan to change harmful common names, and to prioritize the implementation of this plan.”