10,000 Birds

Corey’s great post on “Butterbutts” (a colloquial name for the Yellow-rumped Warbler) reminded me of two questions I’m often asked by new birders: what’s the point of scientific names and do I need to know them?

It’s a reasonable thing to ask, especially given how much there is to learn when you start birding anyway. They may look an anoraky embellishment to birding that an ordinary birder will never use, but there is a very good reason why scientific names exist, and once you get beyond the fact that most are derived from Latin and Classical Greek (which, I think I’m safe to say, not many of us speak these days) scientific names are actually both useful and good fun.

Really? You sound as if you doubt my words, my friends, so let me ask you something. Many of this blog’s readers are US based, so I’m going to ask a US based question that should still have relevance to most twitchers in the northern hemisphere: have you ever seen a Wanderdrossel, a Roodborstlijster, or a Vandringstrast? Not sure? Okay, then, how about an American Robin? You have? Well, if you have seen an American Robin then you’ve also seen a Wanderdrossel, a Roodborstlijster, and a Vandringstrast. They’re one and the same bird, as described by a German, a Dutchman, and a Swede.

A Robin, a Roodborstlijster, or a Vandringstrast? Yes…

How much easier would it be if we could only all speak English (how many times have I heard that said in this corner of a long-gone Empire!). Well, what if I asked you if you’d seen a Robin then? Most birders would say yes straight away, but would the North American be talking about the same bird as a Brit? The North American would be thinking of the common red-breasted bird found in gardens and woodlands, and so - actually - would the Brit: but they wouldn’t be thinking about the same species. The European Robin is a small sparrow-sized bird related to old-world flycatchers, whereas the American Robin is almost twice the size and is a thrush. Go further afield and an Australian birder may assume I was asking about any one of ten native “robins” (which are actually distantly related to honeyeaters) that they’d be familiar with…

Scientific names didn’t arise because of the possible problems caused by North American and Brit birders having problems with Robins of course. When taxonomists first began to put names in earnest to eg birds around the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries communication across cities was hard enough let alone from one end of a country to the next. Amateur biologists everywhere were out and about randomly assigning names to what they thought were unnamed species, without realising that the bearded bloke in the next valley had already decided that the Lapwing (photo left) he was seeing should be called a Peewit or that it was already being called a Green Plover elsewhere.

When you then go on to consider that there are now almost 10,000 bird species recognised - hmm, 10,000 Birds, that would make a great name for something wouldn’t it? - and over twenty languages spoken by more than 50 million people each the potential for confusion amongst birders, researchers, and scientists is absolutely huge. Obviously what’s needed is a common language that allows all interested parties wherever they are to know exactly which bird they’re talking about, and that “common language” is the scientific name: in the case of the American Robin it’s Turdus migratorius - the ‘Migrating Thrush’ (even as an essentially monoglot Brit I can see how similar that is to the melodic ‘Vandring-srast’).

The organising genius who first devised the scientific name was a Swedish naturalist called Carl van Linné (May 13, 1707 - January 10, 1778), who is more usually known by the Latinised version of his name Linnaeus. A collector and taxonomist he came up with a set of rules to enable him to “label” or categorize his specimens, and to share his thoughts with similarly like-minded (and presumably well-educated) colleagues around the world.

Linnaeus’ rules have since been formalised, and many of the names he originally proposed either modified or dropped entirely (his take on our own species, Homo sapiens is sometimes bizarre for instance). Since 1901 scientific names have been governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, which is recognised throughout the world and takes as its basis the tenth edition of Linnaeus’ book Systema Naturae, published in 1758. (The first edition of Systema Naturae was printed in the Netherlands in 1735 and had just eleven pages. By the time it reached its 10th edition in 1758, it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants.)

Every single biological entity on the planet now has its own unique scientific name: every plant, bird, insect, and fish etc. And every scientific name follows the same standardised form in what is known as binomial (bi = two, so ‘two part’) nomenclature: a generic noun with a leading capital letter (eg Turdus), and an all lower-case specific adjective (migratorius).

The generic part of the name indicates relationships: not all thrushes are in the genus Turdus (the small North American thrushes which includes Hermit and Swainson’s for example, are in the genus Catharus), but all the thrushes that are closely-related (eg the American Robin, European Blackbird, Fieldfare, Dusky Thrush etc) are. The specific part name denotes - as you’d expect - the species: migratorius. In combination the two are unique: there are other Turdus and there are other species called migratorius, but wherever you go and whoever you speak to there is just the one Turdus migratorius. (For the pedants reading this, yes, sometimes species have TWO scientific names because there may be a disagreement which genus an animal or plant belongs to, but in the end the differences between the researchers will probably be settled and one name will be accepted and the other dropped.)

The Rules are being constantly being revised and updated of course, and an interesting change was the addition of the trinomial (tri = three) to indicate a rank just below specific level. Take for example the numerous forms of the Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis. Once thought of as a bunch of separate species, all “dark-eyed” birds are now considered to be forms or subspecies of each other: eastern “Slate-coloured” birds have the scientific name of Junco hyemalis hyemalis for example (because the specific and subspecific names are the same this is considered to be the nominate form); the “Pink-sided” form found throughout much of western North America is Junco hyemalis oreganus; and the “Grey-headed” form found in the Rockies is Junco hyemalis caniceps. They are all the same species, but their extremely close relationship is reflected in their three-part scientific names. My favourite trinomial, incidentally, arises from the minor given to the small eastern form of the Great Tit, which is therefore known as Parus major minor (which always sounds like a name out of an old-fashioned school register to me!).

This is all very interesting, you might say, but so what? Do I really need to bother with scientific names?

It’s not essential of course, but if you’re planning to travel they can be helpful: many moons ago I met a birder in India who was looking for something in a bush, which - after a while - he said was Acrocephalus aedon. Thumbs up all around as this is the scientific name for the Thick-billed Warbler, which at the time was a lifer for me. If - as a Brit birding in the US - I was to wonder if the bird my colleague had just identified as a Bank Swallow was actually a Sand Martin, I would find, on looking in a reference book, that we were both right and we’d just been using different names for Riparia riparia…

You may not be on the verge of birding around the world of course, but some scientific names are - as I mentioned - just plain good fun to look into. Some are wonderfully evocative (the scientific name of the Atlantic Puffin Fratercula arctica translates as “little brother of the Arctic”), and many names point to relationships that help us understand more about the birds we’re looking at: Turdus thrushes versus Catharus thrushes for instance, the similarities between the Dendroica warblers, the fact that the Nearctic Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis is so closely-related to the Palearctic Common Buzzard Buteo buteo. There are many, many examples of course - and it’s worth looking at the scientific name of the next new species you learn and mentally organise it with birds in the same genus, or see how one group of birds which may look similar to another aren’t related at all (Swifts Apodidae and Swallows Hirundidae for instance). Not essential, no, but interesting nonetheless.

Before I finish how about two more facts (I’ll be asking questions later): the longest scientific name of any bird is apparently Griseotyrannus aurantioatrocristatus, the Crowned Slaty Flycatcher of South America (the name translates as “Griseus” - grey; “tyrannus” - tyrant flycatcher; “aurantius” - golden-coloured; “ater” - black; and “cristatus” - crested); and the longest scientific name of any animal is Gammaracanthuskytodermogammarus loricatobaicalensis which is apparently a shrimp-like creature (I have no idea what it translates as I’m afraid, and - sadly - Axel Braunlich who knows about these things says that the name is no longer valid anyway [see “Comments” below]).

Useful stuff eh? We aim to provide the info you really need here at 10,000 Birds!