The American Ornithological Society, will ultimately see all species of birds in the United States and Canada renamed to “address past wrongs and engage far more people.”
The AOS announced Wednesday that starting in 2024, it will begin changing the names of 70-80 birds currently named after people. Whether or not this initiative for the birds will fly with zoologists and the general public remains to be seen.
“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today. We need a much more inclusive and engaging scientific process that focuses attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves,” said AOS president Colleen Handel, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska.
“Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely — and birds need our help now more than ever,” added Handel.
The AOS has dabbled in this practice of erasing history to cater to the sensitivities of contemporary ideologues for years. In 2020, the AOS renamed McCown’s Longspur the Thick-billed Longspur. This prairie bird, also known as Rhynchophanes mccownii, was originally named after John P. McCown, an amateur avian collector who was a Confederate general.
Audubon reported that the 2020 decision was in part the result of the social justice Bird Names for Birds pressure campaign, whose activist organizers claimed that “eponyms (a person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named) and honorific common bird names (a name given to something in honor of a person) are problematic because they perpetuate colonialism and the racism associated with it.”
Filed under not a surprise –The campaign was supported by various leftist factions, including the Black & Latinx Birders Scholarship, the Anti-racist Collective of Avid Birders, the Feminist Bird Club, and Philly Queer Birds.
In August 2020, the AOS announced it was committed “to evolve with respect to issues of social justice. … It is encouraging to see that the ornithological community in North America as a whole is embracing this mission and recognizing the need for greater efforts toward inclusion, as evidenced by the massive support for Black Birders Week, Black Lives Matter, and other recent and important social movements that we’ve seen gain momentum in the public sphere.”
AOS has made clear it will not stop until every last bird — at least 260 species with people’s names — is renamed to the satisfaction of activists.
While the names birders and virtually everyone else have grown accustomed to will be erased, the AOS indicated that scientific names for the birds will be preserved. The bald eagle could, for instance, lose its familiar moniker, but it would remain the Haliaeetus leucocephalus.
The Eskimo curlew, the Inca dove, and the flesh-footed shearwater are among the many names on the chopping block, reported USA Today.
Scott’s oriole, named for Winfield Scott, will similarly be depersoned. Scott served as commanding general of the U.S. Army from 1841 to 1861, serving in the War of 1812, the Indian Wars, and the Mexican-American War. Not only did Scott, said by Ulysses S. Grant to have been “the finest specimen of manhood [his] eyes had ever beheld,” capture Mexico City and defeat General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s armies on multiple occasions, but he later went on to advise President Abraham Lincoln at the outset of the Civil War. Despite his service to the nation that made the OAS possible, Old Fuss and Feathers will reportedly no longer have a bird to his name on account of his hand in driving Cherokee Indians from their lands.
The AOS indicated that it is establishing a new committee to oversee this destructionist campaign, vowing to ensure that its members will be “diverse” with “expertise in the social sciences, communications, ornithology, and taxonomy.”
Just when you think you’ve heard it all these crazy people top themselves.
These are people with an awful lot of leisure time on their hands and nothing of substance to be doing to be productive citizens who are coming up with these crackpot “WOKE” ideas that have them believing that birds give a damn what name we give them as if we common folks were going to be aware of all these names in the first place.
This idiocy affects all. Do we ALL get a say in this?
I vote you get a life and leave birdnames alone.
Oh look…names of birds need to be investigated, all the while terrorists are infiltrating our country by way of open borders. Seriously people .
….FOCUS!!!
These are the same people who thrive in a totalitarian political system, as well as being the very people a totalitarian political system like the Soviet Union under Joe Stalin or the Red Guards in China under Mao Tse Tung needs and requires to thrive.
Km, no offense intended towards you personally whatsoever, but by using the word “sense” in relation to modern America, and especially this totalitarian crowd at The American Ornithological Society whose goal is to see all species of birds in the United States and Canada renamed to “address past wrongs and engage far more people,” you are living in a dream world, because when people like this totalitarian crowd at The American Ornithological Society make a statement blaming what THEY, the totalitarians, consider to be “past wrongs” on innocent birds, there is no longer such a thing as “sense” left in America and the living proof of that is Joe Biden in the white house!
you just can”t make this stuff up!!! Being bald I relate to our National bird and will be offended if a name gets changed. How about the Canada goose, will they finally name it the Canadian goose? Are flowers next, what about insects? Lets make this easy:
Birds – flying things
Flowers – pretty colorful leafy things
Insects – crawly things that sometimes fly
Manual – furry sometimes swimmy things
Fish – scaly swimmy things
These make as much sense and hopefully will not offend anyone
Marriage — a legally and socially sanctioned union between a man and a woman.
Rabbit – oversexed little furry thing
Scrapple, dude, you not only have a way with words, but also the ability to see though all the confusion into the heart of things, and to then give voice to that reality in words we common folks can all appreciate and understand.
Scrapple, dude, like the Doodah Man once told me, and I think that you above all others, including myself, have epitomized this quite well with your learned and erudite discourse above here on the role the rabbit plays in the society of the animal world in America today, the rabbit being an animal I have an affinity towards, although sadly they don’t last long because every thing out there that considers them a food source, the foxes, owls, hawks and coyotes, are also quite good at catching them to eat, you got to play your hand sometimes, and in educating us about the role the rabbit plays in animal society, you have accomplished that task quite admirably, because the cards ain’t worth a damn if you don’t lay ’em down.
Racism is an attitude that takes place in one’s mind.
Discrimination is an overt act that takes place in the real world.
If you scratch a Liberal you will find a Fascist.
If common sense were lard, these American Ornithological Society people who want to have all species of birds in the United States and Canada renamed to “address past wrongs and engage far more people” wouldn’t be able to grease a pan!