Last year was big for the American Ornithological Society – you know, the people responsible for the official standardized list of North American birds. It’s dinner table quality excitement we’re talking here.
“Honey, did you hear the news from our friends at the AOS?” he asked.
“No, dear, what’s going on?” she said.
“The Western Scrub jay is from hence forth going to be called the California Scrub jay” he replied.
“Whaaaat?!”
The jay was just one among dozens of species given new monikers last year. Most were renamed for scientific clarity and some of those are common to local wildlands and telephone poles.
The Barn Owl was considered a worldwide species but as the climate changes and populations of the owl change with it, the one species of owl has been split into three. Locally our owl is called the American Barn Owl. Since no one bothered to add a hyphen to barn owl we may forever wonder if the bird lives exclusively in American barns, or if it is a barn owl that lives in America.
Our cattle egret is now called the Western Cattle-Egret (so named by someone more familiar with common punctuation, it seems.) Losing a hyphen last year was the Black-crowned Night Heron, formerly the Black-crowned Night-Heron.
Cattle egrets were originally found only in Africa and parts of Asia, but they somehow ended up here in the early 1900s. More than a century of separation has resulted in two distinct species, with the African/Asian version now known as the Eastern Cattle-Egret.
The little, elusive but boisterous house wren is no longer categorized in just one species. There are now seven kinds of the little guy. The one frequently seen or heard in our woodlands or nestboxes is now known as the Northern House Wren.
In past years, many other birds have been renamed. For example, the marsh hawk is now called the Western Harrier and the small but fierce American Kestrel was once named Sparrow Hawk.
The good news is the bald eagle is still the bald eagle even though its head is fully-feathered, and the Common redpoll and Hoary redpoll are now just one redpoll named, Redpoll.
The booby prize in the most recent frenzy of handing out new sobriquets goes to the Brown Booby which, to no one’s surprise, is brown from beak to claw. The bird now has a southern cousin in California with a whitish colored head and neck named the Cocos Booby. Its name commemorates the Cocos tectonic plate off the northern coast.
If getting one’s name changed isn’t enough, how about getting one’s name changed twice? Prior to 1989, a species known as the Western Flycatcher, could be found in western North America. It lived in the riparian woodlands where it caught flies (and other flying insects) for food. The bird had what was thought to be two geographically separate populations that overlapped in some regions, but even where they overlapped the populations were not believed to mate with each other.
So, in 1989, the Western Flycatcher was divided into two separate and distinct species, the Cordilleran Flycatcher (found mostly along the Rocky Mountains and Mexico’s Sierra Madre), and the Pacific-slope Flycatcher (found in Washington, Oregon, California, and Baja). In addition, the decision to split the species was based on voice and genetic differences.
Ever since then, birders throughout western North America have been having migraines because it is generally believed impossible to identify one species from the other. Their differences in plumage, structure, voice, and genetics are subtle and inconsistent. Where the two species’ ranges overlap, they are even known to hybridize. Enough of that! A mere three decades-plus later, in 2023, the birds were reunited into a single species – the Western Flycatcher.
One may wonder how all this renaming is being accepted among the birding community. Some say it’s overdue because science has long shown the need for clarification in naming conventions. Others say it’s a waste of time and, frankly, for the birds.
For amateur birders, it’s probably best not to write one’s life lists of birds in ink. Use a pencil and notebook to keep track of birds seen while visiting any of the local wildlife refuges.
The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, Merced National Wildlife Refuge and the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge comprise the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Its headquarters and visitor center are located just north of Los Banos off Highway 165 at 7376 South Wolfsen Road.
The refuges are open to visitors daily from one half-hour before sunrise to one half-hour after sunset. The visitor center is open Monday through Friday except federal holidays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, call the refuge visitor center at 209-826-3508, ext. 127 or check out the upcoming events on the website at fws.gov/refuge/san-luis.
