NAMING OF WILDLIFE COULD BE FUN.

There has  always been controversy regarding wildlife names, particularly eponyms. I have no argument with dropping the name of a person because it offends a section of the community, whether politically or racially, or whether justified or not, it is enough that someone is offended. I would be offended if someone were to put forward certain names (albeit very few).

However, indiscriminate dropping of eponyms should be stopped for two reasons. Firstly there can be nothing wrong in honouring a research worker, scientist or conservationist. I use the IOC list , and the committee recognises the potential offensiveness of many names in the USA, and tends to concur with the ABA. More interestingly, there have been rational decisions made regarding spellings and actual names which differ between English and American English (but don't use a "spell-checker") .Thus we have Grey-headed Lapwing and Grey Noddy, but also Clay-colored Robin and Cream-colored Courser. Gray occurs, but only in an eponym! The Grays were brothers who were born and worked in England, basically their lives were devoted to science and ornithology. Should some people wish to change the bird's names, they have no less than thirteen species named after one or other of them, although some have been changed already. I find the whole subject of eponyms interesting, and whatever has happened in history so be it, but it is for that reason that I prefer fewer changes. Should you be wondering, families have tended to go along with worldwide usage, although we will still call them Divers, they are officially Loons. Larger Skuas are still Skuas, but Arctic, Pomarine and Long-tailed are Jaegers. I personally prefer loon, as the descriptive term "divers" is meaningless, lots of birds and mammals dive.

My main reason for a dislike of changing eponyms is the sheer unimaginativeness of many names. There are only a certain number of descriptive titles "available" and it does lead to confusion, plus it's boring! There are three Black Ducks, at one time the epithets African, American, and Pacific weren't used. I suppose a boring name befits a boring bird, but no bird is totally boring to everybody. A common bat in the US is Big Brown Bat, descriptive but really tells you nothing about the species whatsoever, as most bats are brown and many are big. There are forty-four species in the current IOC list which are "Black-throated" and thirty-five which are "Black-capped", just a little bit of imagination would be good. Not helping the situation is such names as American Robin, which is a thrush, or various redstarts which are not related. Perhaps, like Eremomelas or Malimbes, we should call thrushes Turds. But they're not all in the genus Turdus.

Perhaps it's because I'm English and remember when a robin was a robin, a lapwing a lapwing, and a kingfisher a kingfisher. Yes, in many birder's minds they still are, and it's useful in the field to use shortened names. "PG tips" is a great name and everyone knows what you mean, likewise "Gropper", whereas if you say Grasshopper Warbler it could in fact refer to either species, although you would probably be referring to Common Grasshopper Warbler if you were in England. There are in fact five Grasshopper Warblers, but only one is on the British list, and they are all in a different genus. But beware over-shortening. My wife had an irritating habit of saying "a Pallas's has turned up (wherever)".  I always used to reply "Pallas's Reed Bunting?". Of course it never was, but in a similar vein I've never forgotten a chap on Scilly in the 80's who rode a bike past several groups of birders calling "R B Flicker at Higher Moors". Naturally most birders realised he meant Flycatcher, but those who had been to the states.......... 

None of this is important, but there used to be a bird called "Queen Carola of Saxony's six-wired Bird of Paradise" which at the time was the longest bird name in the world. It still has an interesting name (Carola's Parotia), but there are also Red and Blue Birds-of-paradise. Mind you, had I seen any of them I wouldn't be too bothered by the name, but a bird like that should surely have a more evocative one. There are two names currently which are the longest in the world- Stuhlmann’s and Prigogine’s Double-collared Sunbirds. As for the shortest, it is probably Nene (Hawaiian Goose) or another species with only four letters. Recently extinct (1987) are the family of Oos, endemic to Hawaii, but there was never an Oo without an epithet.

My last ramble is about descriptive names which, probably by co-incedence, cross orders. I trapped a Common Swift yesterday, but I haven't seen a Common Swift yet this year. (Stop press, just been to Cumbria mothing-swifts in abundance over Kendal). Not even a clever riddle, unless you are completely oblivious to the existence of moths. However, amusingly, when I visited Sri Lanka last year I was trying to identify some butterflies I had photographed when I came across a Common Gull (Cepora nerissa). Further research yielded families of Albatrosses (there are five species of Albatross in Sri Lanka!), Crows, Jays, Peacocks, Tigers and Leopards. I wonder how popular I would be if I radioed a message in Yala National Park saying I'd located a Leopard when referring to a butterfly! I doubt such confusion has ever occurred, and it can sometimes be somewhat educational. Many species of moth are named after their food plants, and whilst I always knew what a turnip looked like, lychnis, viper's bugloss and star-wort I wasn't even aware of (their existence). I even planted Oleanders in the hope of attracting my most dreamed-of moth (Oleander Hawk-moth), along with my tongue firmly planted in cheek.