This Month in Birding – May 2021
May 27, 2021
Sean Milnes, Jordan Rutter, and Purbita Saha join the May 2021 This Month in Birding panel to talk about some of the most important bird and birding related news items of the month.
Links to items discussed:
Female Bird Day (6:56)
Colombia boycotts the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Global Big Day (8:52)
AOS moves forward on changing English bird names (17:25)
The period cicada’s Brood X is here and impacting birds (24:15)
Chicago releases feral cats into the city (33:40)
Estimates of bird populations mean there are 6 wild birds per human (42:35)
And don’t forget that Black Birders Week is next week!
Thanks to Field Guides for sponsoring this episode. Check out their new video series, Out Birding with Field Guides.
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The American Birding Podcast brings together staff and friends of the American Birding Association as we talk about birds, birding, travel and conservation in North America and beyond.
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Jordan Rutter says, regarding the AOS webinar about changing eponymous English names of birds that “we all agreed to do this.” That agreement was a foregone conclusion because the participants were carefully selected to include only participants likely to support this movement. Her assessment that the committee was too white and too male reflect her own prejudices and miseuroanthropy. The most telling fact about the committee makeup was that not ONE avian taxonomist (those folks whose specialty is bird names) was on a committee about bird names! No member of the AOS NACC, the very body that can actually make… Read more »
Just to address a few of these points. “reflect her own prejudices and miseuroanthropy.” This is patently unfair and, frankly, a bizarre charge to make. — not ONE avian taxonomist (those folks whose specialty is bird names) Avian taxonomist are specialists in phylogeny and bird evolution. They are absolutely not experts on “bird names”, which would be the purview of historians probably more than anyone. There’s no reason why hobby birders would be any less authoritative on bird names than an avian taxonomist. — it should be necessary to demonstrate exclusion or harm caused by the name in question. Demonstrate… Read more »