Cooper is going to lose his hawk. So is Swainson.
The birds won’t know or care. And Mssrs. Cooper and Swainson are long deceased.
But well-known names like Cooper’s hawk aren’t expected to be spared when more than 70 species in the United States and Canada are changed, a process likely to challenge publishers, annoy some birdwatchers and even cost money for game-players. Included among these birds are at least 40 that live or migrate through Missouri.
“It’s potentially a giant mess,” says Bill Rowe, past president of the board of the St. Louis Audubon Society.
He questions how the American Ornithological Society is going to wrangle public input to come up with new English names for the dozens of birds currently named after people.
“I’m not against involving the public, but how they are going to do it?”
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The society announced in November that after several years of discussion and seeking input about controversial bird names, it would rename all birds with eponyms. It seeks a more democratic naming process with public suggestions.
No feathered friend would get a pass, not even Lincoln’s sparrow (which actually isn’t named after the president).
The decision was originally considered because some birds had been named for people (usually white men) who have been dishonored because of links to slavery, the Confederacy, Native American removal or other reasons.
In 2020, after the George Floyd murder, Confederate statues were among targets of social justice protests, as were some prominent buildings named for the like. That same May, a Black birdwatcher became famous from a viral video. A white woman called 911 because the man, Christopher Cooper, asked her to leash her dog in New York’s Central Park to keep it from pursuing birds.
Bird names had been criticized before, but this race-conscious time seemed to lead to more action: A prairie songbird formerly known as McCown’s longspur was changed to thick-billed longspur. The original name honored John P. McCown, an amateur naturalist who collected a specimen of the bird in 1851. McCown later became a general in the Confederate Army. (McCown’s name will remain, however, in the bird’s scientific name, which won’t change — Rhynchophanes mccownii).
Adding pressure to change eponyms was the website Bird Names for Birds, which criticizes proper names as “problematic because they perpetuate colonialism and the racism associated with it.” It brings more attention to the issue by cataloging names and providing bios of some of the people bird names have honored.
The bios can be fascinating: Emilie Snethlage, a Prussian who explored Brazil, described 60 species or subspecies of birds and helped open the sciences to women. She was so tough that when a finger, bitten by a piranha, became infected, she cut some of it off with a machete, the bio says. But then there’s John Kirk Townsend, who sometimes desecrated the graves of Indigenous people so he could study their skulls.
After years of increasing pressure, and study by a bird names committee, the ornithological society decided to just eliminate all bird eponyms. After it tackles birds in the U.S. and Canada, it is expected to expand to the entire Western Hemisphere.
It quoted its executive director in a news release in November, saying that “there has been historic bias in how birds are named, and who might have a bird named in their honor. Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the 1800s, clouded by racism and misogyny, don’t work for us today, and the time has come for us to transform this process and redirect the focus to the birds, where it belongs.” In other words, director Judith Scarl deemed the whole history of honoring people by naming birds after them as suspect and dated.
So far, the American Ornithological Society has yet to give hard details about the renaming process. In the past, it indicated that it would announce new names for 10 or so birds a year. In its most recent annual report, released last month, it promises to begin a pilot program that includes public input on new bird names.
Pros and cons
Although the move to rename birds has support, some prominent ornithologists and birdwatchers still question the need to eliminate all proper names.
In fact, more than 1,000 people have signed a petition recently asking the AOS to reconsider its decision, Bill Rowe says.
Rowe shared a recent paper by ornithologist James Van Remsen Jr., who criticized the renaming process and many of its assumptions. Although “the opposition to removal of all eponyms was extensive and in fact unprecedented in the history of ornithology,” Remsen writes, the society’s bird names committee did not seek wider input.
Remsen, curator emeritus of the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University, counters many of the society assumptions, including questioning whether birds named after 19th-century naturalists is off-putting or interesting for future naturalists and amateur birders.
He writes: “Where are the data that show that the eponym presents an obstacle to learning any more than the other names? The real obstacle to learning would be having to learn the new names and dealing with all printed literature on them becoming instantly obsolete.”
Rowe himself, who bought his first pair of binoculars for birdwatching 67 years ago — when he was 12 — makes it clear that he supports removal of harmful and racist names. But he’d rather the eponymous birds be considered case by case.
A change of dozens, perhaps eventually hundreds, of names is a “a big practical change in all the books and the resources we all use and the names we’ve become familiar with.”
Rowe writes a weekly bird profile for the St. Louis Audubon Society and participates on several committees. The society has a checklist online for St. Louis birdwatchers, and as names change, Rowe says, he can easily update the digital page.
But he points out that book publishers may be reluctant to produce new editions every year another 10 or so birds are renamed. He suggests that birders may just have to scratch through old names and update bird guides themselves.
Wingspan, a popular bird board game developed in St. Louis, includes colorful cards of more than 170 birds.
Jamey Stegmaier, head of Stonemaier Games, says the process to rename birds will take a while. His company plans to release new packets of cards that players can buy as the birds are renamed: “It will be minimal expense for us and for customers when we do that.”
He notes that when producing new cards there is always a “risk that errors will be made.” But Stonemaier Games doesn’t oppose the renaming, posting on its website:
“We prefer to use the official names for birds, and we love the idea of celebrating birds for their unique qualities, traits, and habitats (opposed to any implied ownership or ties to a person).”
The board game has sold about 2 million sets over its five years, he says, with the expansion sets selling an additional 1 million. Stegmaier notes the “nice relationship between birding and Wingspan,” saying he thinks the game generates interest in birds for some game players.
Growth in birding
Rowe agrees that birdwatching is much more popular than when he was young and birders were caricatured on TV as nerdy guys with binoculars.
“It’s become more acceptable as an outdoor pastime.”
When you look at Missouri state park websites, he notes, they will reference birding as an activity: “You didn’t see that in the '60s and '70s.”
He says more people around the globe are interested in birdwatching, with some countries’ residents interested in guiding visitors. Others “just like it,” he says.
Still, there is room to diversify further, Rowe says.
Recent books on birds have displayed some diversity. Novelist Amy Tan, who visits St. Louis on May 11 for a sold-out event, turned from fiction to memoir with her new book, “The Back Yard Bird Chronicles.”
Last year, Christopher Cooper, the Central Park birder, published “Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World.” And British-Bangladeshi writer Mya-Rose Craig released “Birdgirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future.”
The ornithological society wants to make sure all bird fans feel welcome and not put off by some of the historic names.
Saving birds altogether is a bigger challenge than renaming them: The U.S. has about 3 billion fewer birds than it did 50 years ago, the journal Science reported in 2019. The more people interested in birds, the better, most concerned groups believe.
In the meantime, the St. Louis Audubon Society has another name to consider — its own. Several Audubon groups have rebranded because their namesake, a famous artist and bird promoter, also owned enslaved people.
Rowe says the local group’s five-year plan requires it to reconsider its name. The National Audubon Society, formed in 1905 to help protect birds, announced in March 2023 that it would retain its name.
A spokeswoman said the name retains value: “The name has come to represent so much more than the work of one person, but a broader love of birds and nature, and a non-partisan approach to conservation.”