In the Name of the Bird

I've always loved the idea of using zoo exhibits as a medium for storytelling.  I've also loved obscure geography and history.  Years ago, I cooked up a speculative exhibit design in my head that combined those interests with an exhibit I called Bering's Crossing.  Centered on the wildlife of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, it would have depicted the wildlife of that region, told through the story of the 1741 expedition led by Vitus Bering, a Dane in the service of the Tsar.  It would have featured Steller's sea eagles, Steller's sea lions, Steller's jay, and Steller's eiders... with a (heated, indoor) aquarium for manatees, which would serve as a stand-in for the now-extinct Steller's sea cow.  

Do you sense a pattern here?

All of these species were named after Georg Steller, Bering's German naturalist, who is also credited with being the first European to describe the sea otter, which also would have been included in this complex.

Several of those species - at least the feathered ones, however - are up for a rename.

After being debated for many years, the American Ornithological Society has announced that it will be renaming birds named after humans.  (I'd discussed it over a year ago, but now it looks like it's moving forward).  This is for a few reasons.  For one thing, it will be more descriptive to name the birds after some feature related to them, such as a physical attribute, a habitat, or a geographical range, than after some person who, on one hand, might have discovered them, or, on the other, might never have heard of them and been given the name as an honor by someone else.  It might make birding more accessible to younger, more diverse generations.  

And it tiptoes around the fact that some of the people who have birds named after them were, in all truth, pretty awful human beings.  James Sligo Jameson, for example - for whom some African birds are named - reportedly bought a little girl in the Congo and offered her up to a tribe of (what he at least believed to be) cannibals so he could observe the ritual of her being cooked and eaten.

Yes, not every person - or even a sizeable fraction - of the people who got birds named after them was a raving psycopath, but still... perhaps it was easier to do a blanket statement than it was to sift the sheep from the goats.

There is plenty of precedent for changing bird names that people think of as problematic.  A particularly gorgeous seaduck went by the offensive name "oldsquaw" for centuries, before recently being rechristened as the long-tailed duck.  And yes, it does have a long tail.  The Hottentot teal is now being referred to as the blue-billed teal.  Not as big of a fan of that one, to be honest - I'm cool with the name being changed from what the Khoekhoe consider an offensive term, but there's already a blue-billed duck... and several other teal species also have blue bills.  Kalahari teal?  Okavango teal?  Just saying, we had other options.

And, yes, while I'm cool with about 99% percent of the names being changed, there are a few that I'm going to miss and have a hard time letting go.  Darwin's rhea, for example - not only named after the famed British naturalist who played a role in the species history, but also so much better than the other common name for the species, "lesser" rhea.  

And, of course, anything pertaining to Steller.  That name, to me, is just too evocative of a landscape, both in time and place.  I remember the first time I saw a Steller's jay, perched in a pine tree in California's Big Sur, with the waves of the Pacific crashing on the rocks in the background.  As soon as the name of the species popped into my head, I found myself thinking of wrecked boats smashed up on ice-covered rocks, with sea birds whirling overhead and previously unknown marine mammals breaking the surface of the waves.

But, times change... and now, so do some bird names.