News

Cancel culture is coming for the birds. Starting in 2024, 70 to 80 North American bird species boasting English names will be renamed. The American Ornithological Society (AOS), a group born out ...
The AOS has changed the English names of birds before. In 2020, a prairie songbird named after John P. McCown, a naturalist and Confederate Army general, was renamed the thick-billed longspur.
The American Ornithological Society, a birding group, pledged Wednesday to change the English names of all bird species in the U.S. and Canada currently named after people.
After years-long discussion, birds will no longer be named after people — a decision meant to dissociate the animals from problematic eponyms. The American Ornithological Society announced ...
James Brown: Hello and welcome to Five Things. I'm James Brown. It's Sunday, April 9th, 2023. Go Bills. Every week we take an idea or concept and go deep, and this episode is for the birds.
The official naming organization for birds in the U. S. is making a bold move, after concerns were raised about birds being named after people with questionable histories.
Analysis of nearly 11,000 English bird names shows that about 90% are based on biological or physical traits, while only 11% honor people.
“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” said Colleen Handel, President of the American ...
The birds’ new names will reflect the species’ appearance or habitat — some trait associated with the actual bird, in other words, and not with the colonial explorer who first identified it.