Let’s start with the question that must be on all our minds: who was Cory? Was he the now-retired bird blogger? Or the Filipina businesswoman Cory Vidanes?
Both these people deserve to have a shearwater named after them, but the eponymous honour belongs to Charles Barney Cory. For scientific names it is a faux pas to name something after yourself, but in English a bird can be named after the “discoverer”. Charles (Chuckie for friends) Cory was an American ornithologist, golfer, outdoorsman, and author, according to Wikipedia. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide, both a boorish ornithologist and a boring golfer. Or as an English comedian once put it: it’s a dessert topping AND a floor cleaner! The same bird has been named after Heinrich Kuhl in Dutch, while most other nations refer to its Atlantic Ocean home, its yellow bill or the Canary Islands (we will get back to that one later on). In Portugal – very woke – it is masculine on the islands (cagarro) and feminine on the mainland (cagarra). Considering all this confusion, Linnaeus came up with the scientific nomenclature, so Calonectris borealis it is. Give that man a statue!
The confusion hasn’t stopped at the naming – when I first heard the eerie sounds of shearwaters on the island of Gozo back in the eighties, there was only Scopoli’s Shearwater with some sub-species. For the listers amongst us the news has been nothing but good: we now have Scopoli’s, Cory’s and Cape Verde Shearwaters.
With the Treaty of Alcáçovas, the Castilian control of the Canary Islands was confirmed (nobody asked the natives as they had been exterminated). This has turned out to be a grave mistake for without the treaty all Cory’s Shearwaters would have been born in Portuguese-speaking territories (and most of them winter in Portuguese-speaking Brazil). What a great pub quiz question that would have made! Castilians even named the bird pardela canaria which is pushing it considering the distribution of the species. To make amends for this gross act of cultural appropriation, SEO/BirdLife, la Sociedad Española de Ornitología is doing a tremendous job with bird conservation on and around the islands. Gracias!
Cory’s Shearwaters are long-living seabirds which has helped them survive human mismanagement and outright abuse. Fishermen on the Atlantic islands used to collect the chicks to use as bait for long-lining, but with the better legal framework and increased awareness the birds have become the unofficial symbol of the islands. The species is now classified as Least Concern. SPEA and SEO run campaigns against light pollution (distracts the fledglings), against introduced predators and much more. During fledging season, the organisations set up boxes all over the islands to collect stranded fledglings. Volunteers descend cliffs to salvage birds. I have been fortunate enough to hold such a rescued Cory’s Shearwater in my hands, which is really special – you usually see them fly past at great speed. So, if you see a Cory’s Shearwater on a pelagic birding trip off the Massachusetts seaboard: think about the work on the Atlantic islands that got it there.
Dazzling text, fun to read – but somehow Peter manages to even take a slightly blurry picture of a (presumably, earthquakes notwithstanding) non-moving statue. But then they called me Mr. Negative at one of my previous employers.
Dr Negative, I presume?
As a young man Charles Cory (1857-1921) inherited “a seemingly unlimited supply of money. This allowed him to go wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without the time-consuming handicap of having to earn a living”. By the time he was 35 he had amassed over 19,000 bird specimens.
Sadly, he lost his fortune at the age of 49. The account of his life in Biographies for Birdwatchers (my source of information) makes a fascinating read. Though he never really recovered from his losses, “he managed to retain his wonderful sense of humour” and did continue to play golf, though at a less exclusive club.
Kai, you really should be more compassionate with us mere (photographic) mortals. I will never understand your ability to take so many spectacular photos in a single lifetime.
David: I love this kind of trivia. According to Wikipedia, Cory even competed in the 1904 Olympics as a golfer … that is a person I would like to read a longer biography of.
Peter: Sadly, no – this was at a consulting company, where people (in order to hide the fact that the atmosphere is very competitive and people generally do not like each other much) – use first names only (also, most people have Ph. D.s, so why bother).
Paul: Thanks – but generally, bird photography is not really very hard, at least the technical part of it, if you have the right equipment. It would be easy to turn a good bird guide into a good bird photographer within a month but impossible to turn a good bird photographer into a good bird guide within a year.