 for Maine birds. I'm Nick Lund, Advocacy and Outreach Manager for Maine Audubon and Doug Hitchcock, the staff naturalist here. Thanks for coming on. Before we get started, just a couple notes. One is that if you would like to enable closed captioning, you can usually do that down along the bottom of your Zoom screen there. Search for it. It may say captions or CC. Doug warned me beforehand that it's not good at hearing bird names. And so you may get a closed caption for everything except the bird name that we say. Apologies, we're doing the best we can. We talk in the chat, if you can, the chat just to us. So there'll be some polls, some interactive things as we go along. Talk about this exciting topic, which is that we have an opportunity now, whether you like it or not, to come up with new names for a whole bunch of birds. And so Doug's going to talk to you now about the decision. And then we're going to dive into some names that Doug and I have come up as just suggestions for some birds found in Maine. So Doug, why don't you take it away here? Yeah. And before diving in, I'll make the quick plug. Hopefully everyone, if you, by the time you found this link, have gotten involved. I hope you're well aware of Maine Audubon and what we do. But I do just want to make the plug that we love being able to do programs like this and things like our birding basics that are starting up with the new year. We have new virtual birding series that Andy Capnose, our field naturalist is doing. He's also got a botany and winter virtual series. We are able to do all of those for free thanks to member support from people like you. So if you're not already a member, please consider joining, becoming a member or making a donation. And thank you to the folks. We did see some donations come in even with this event tonight. So we really appreciate that support. And you can help us keep the lights on by supporting our work to connect Maine Mainers with Maine's wildlife and protected habitats. So as Nick kind of teed up, this is what we're going to talk about this announcement that came out from the AOS that they were going to be changing some bird names before kind of diving into this. I do want to kind of set the stage. I realize a lot of folks might not even know who the AOS is, what they do. So let's take one step back literally to their homepage. We're talking about the American Ornithological Society. Depending on kind of your again background in history, you might know this group. Formerly, as the AOU, the American Ornithological Union had joined with the Cooper Society to form what is now called the AOS. So even their own name has changed. It's a global nonprofit that really focuses on advancing scientific study and conservation of birds. So doing stuff again globally all over the world and really anything that has to do with Ornithology and conservation. One example I always like to give, especially like if you come to Maine Audubon, you might see like shelves that are covered with these old issues of the AUK. That is one of the old journals that they used to put out. So if you ever see those or see old papers and publications from the AUK, that's thanks to the AOU at that time. One of the many things that the AOS does is they have this excuse me, this group, the NACC North American Classification Committee. And their role is to evaluate and codify basically the latest in systematic nomenclature and distribution of of North and Middle American birds. What that means is these are the names that we use. Basically all the whether you're using ebird and you see the the list of common names that are in there and the names that are in your field guide. Those are really nicely standardized amongst birds thanks to the AOS and the NACC. As a naturalist I always appreciate that we have this really nice kind of standardized way, especially when I start looking through like a plant field guide and you'll see the same plant can have like six or eight different common names. And it becomes like really confusing to talk about and then you meet some like real plant nerds that only use like Latin binomials and and I don't think that that's helpful at all. So having good standardized common names, especially thanks to the AOS here, it's really helpful. I want to point out, you know, we're going to have fun tonight talking about this this big change. This is essentially unprecedented in the scope or the scale of it. But birders do this every year. If you're a fan of the American birding association, they do multiple blog posts, they do podcast episodes every year where they kind of go through all the different proposals, different changes that the AOS has put forth. There's usually three rounds of proposals every year, again, to update everything from names, taxonomy, and even just updating that checklist with proper distributions of birds. So with that in mind that that part of the AOS, which does so much, one part of them, one committee is this NACC that is in charge of setting the standardized bird names. Since 2019, they've been kind of looking at bird names, specifically those, the eponyms, the birds that are named after people. And trying to come up with kind of a new way to think about them, how to interpret them. And that's what this on November 1, this big announcement came out that basically made three commitments. And that's what I just want to go through real quick. The first one, the first commitment was that they would change all the bird names directly after people. And then there are a couple other names deemed offensive to different populations. So those would change as well. The interesting thing about this is that there had already been some cases. McCown's long spur was kind of the very popularized example. McCown was a civil war, what was his right general, Nick might know this, but anyways, he was a proponent of slavery, literally fought for it. There should not be a bird named after him. McCown's long spur was renamed as thick billed long spur around that time. So 2019 was when some of these proposals were first being made. And it was realized that there are a lot of birds named after people that probably shouldn't be. And that's what started this whole debate. You can look at the AOS, especially at some of their like annual conferences started basically having these conversations and opening up different groups to get input and basically figure out what should be done. The quick answer or the quick answer I'll give after this multi-year process is I decided to just change all the names rather than going through a case-by-case basis that could take an incredibly long time. And really the almost endless debate that would go on would come down to essentially value judgments and kind of focus on this like human morality of like, what do we deem acceptable? What is something that is like bad enough that someone shouldn't have a bird named after them? There are certainly plenty of people that to the best of our knowledge like did great things, great advancements in ornithology that do have birds named after them. So rather than trying to like draw a line somewhere on this spectrum, again which come down to value judgments, they decided why not just change all eponyms and not have to make that call. The real quick number is that that comes down to about 152 English names that are within the NACC's region which is in total about 5% of English names. So I have to hear a lot of people say like, oh this is going to be so many new names we have to learn and bird names change all the time. This is going to be a big change in a relatively short time frame but about 5% is really not that bad, especially when you think like there were some changes this year. Did people realize Goss Hawk got changed thanks to a taxonomic split? The northern Goss Hawk is now called the American Goss Hawk. Last couple, the other two commitments to mention this idea that they would actually establish a committee to oversee the assignment of common names because right now or I should say past committees basically really focused on taxonomy. Those were the experts that were in that room coming up with these new names and they realized that they needed these committees to be more diverse in their knowledge of culture, of public communication, outreach, education, why not have all these voices essentially in the room when it comes to coming up with these new names. In this idea, a fun thing to look at all of these proposals that have come through over the years, one that I always sticks out in my mind, one of my favorite birds in the world is a salt marsh sparrow. That's a species in Maine that was recently added to the Maine endangered species list. There was a proposal just a few years ago to change the name of salt marsh sparrow to Peterson's sparrow, to turn it into an eponym name after rogettory Peterson to fit in with Alcant's and Nelson's, these other eponymic bird names like within these similar looking birds and kind of interesting. I think it's interesting that like the AOS, that committee decided not to change that name just to honor this great person. So if anything, we've been skewing this way long before any of these other changes. There still have been some recent, it wasn't Ravoli's hunting bird, just the new name of Magnificent, or am I making that up? This is a big shift away and I think it's a really smart shift overall, just away from the potential moral questions that our future people will have to face. There are plenty of cool ways to honor people. We can put statues up, we can make books in their honor, we can can do other things. But I think this is the first time the body is saying naming, living species after them, just not the right way to do it. And then this kind of gets us to the last commitment, which is basically why we're doing this tonight. The last commitment was that they were going to involve the public in the process of selecting new names. This is a really fun thing to think about that if you can engage the public, especially looking for public input for coming up with these new names, that has got to be one of the most powerful grassroots ways to get this kind of new level of buy-in from the public that will hopefully get people to care more about these birds. We know that overall biodiversity loss is just a huge threat as we're seeing from all sorts of different angles, different sources. So being able to get more people involved and again getting this level of buy-in I think is going to have hopefully some great long term gain for these species. The last point I want to make before I'll hand it over to Nick for a second. There's lots of criticisms out there of why spend time and effort on this. We've tried to emphasize this is just a small committee, a small thing that the AOS does. For all the naysayers or skeptics out there, the AOS does an absolutely amazing amount of work. This is the group that can make the step, make the change that can make birding more inclusive if you're concerned about the AOS and what their priorities are. Remember, NACC is about changing bird names. I'd encourage everyone to check out the AOS and all the amazing stuff they do. Maybe consider becoming a member. I was just looking through their 2022 annual report where Justin, that year they had provided $134,000 in research support, which I won't just read this to you but I'll encourage everyone to go maybe download this report off their website and check out all the amazing work that the AOS is doing in addition to coming up with new bird names. It's important to note here that main Audubon is itself named after someone, someone with a checkered pass as we know, John James Audubon, and the question arises as in this process of renaming birds is main Audubon considering renaming itself? Well, we are along with many other Audubon societies around the country. As you know, we are not all, we are not linked. Many of us are in different places. We are engaging in a very thoughtful process about considering our name and what that means and what it doesn't mean. I'm proud to say that this is a very, it's a more thoughtful and involved process and I think any other Audubon that I've ever heard of is engaging in. We are talking with all kinds of folks around the state, our members, partner groups, all kinds of people to really understand what our name means to people, what it means to us, and what the implications are of it. So we don't have an answer yet. We are in the thick of this process, which we'll continue for some time, but we are thinking about it very seriously. The next thing, and I realize this slides a little out of order, this was kind of, this was the last minute thing we realized. Let's come back. Let's come back to this. Can we come back to this? Okay, great. So, yeah. No, the fun thing to now think about is where do bird names come from? What makes a good name, for lack of a better way of describing it? Ring neck duck here, being one of those species that is just kind of a horrible name. It's only under the best lighting situations that you can actually see that ring on the neck. Meanwhile, they have this amazing ring around their bell. Why? I think the point, the start here as we start with this process of figuring out what the new names for these birds are, is we have to remind ourselves that they don't make a lot of sense, that there isn't any such thing as a perfect bird name. There are birds all over the map that doesn't make that sort of are badly named or aren't perfectly named or names that are weird. We're going to get into this point of figuring out what we suggest for new names for these birds, but there is no, the arguments are just getting started. There is no sort of answer a lot of times. And so we want to talk to you a little bit about where some of the birds that we currently have, where did they get them? That was a good pun. There is no answer as we look at a duck and an seriform. So a fun thing to think about is where do these bird names come from? And especially what we'll consider some of the better names. And there's this fun spectrum to think about where we see these ones, you know, this bird here, yellow-headed blackbird. What a fantastic name. It's descriptive of the bird's appearance. Even if you showed this bird to someone who was not a bird watcher and you said, hey, what would you call this bird? Yellow-headed blackbird would probably be one of the first things you say. It's a fun one to think about with like red-winged blackbird, a more common bird here in Maine is one we often talk about kind of in the the same idea. But Nick and I actually just last month took a trip to California and one of the target birds we were looking for there is called tricolored blackbird. And it's funny to think about where here in Maine, all the red-winged blackbirds actually have like the three colors. You get that extra that color in the wing. But I want to jump in and say, even this can be difficult too. Some people have noted in the chat that a lot of the names that are descriptive of the appearance are often only named for the male's plumage, which is often, you know, brighter and has certain things. And so there's a whole other body of, you know, name considerations out there. We were saying, well, are we leaving out an entire half of the population by naming a descriptive out only after the males? So that's something that we that is in our world as we're thinking about these things. Yeah, so is it just stepped in the males? Is it where most of the population is? So there's a lot of birds that are named after certain locations. This is a fun example, especially because it was a recent name change. For a long time, you know, I bet most most of your field guides probably still call this Gray J. They were renamed as the Canada J. The fun thing to think about with that is I took this photo in Maine, not in Canada at all. So it's again, there's this focus sometimes on the brightly colored males, on where those birds generally occur. Even the word common can be really confusing when they're not common in your area. And I jump in on this. I mean, I think it's also important that a lot of the location of the geographic names are ludicrous, right? Connecticut Warbler is what in Connecticut for a day, a year maybe. Savannah Sparrow, I think is named because it was shot first in Savannah, you know, it's wherever it was just coming through. And so these names are not being reconsidered, but there's something in the world that we can think about it again as we think of new names, although I find they're very rarely useful unless it's a very small population of something. Yeah, like that. Here's another one, Cape May Warbler, which breeds all across the boreal forest. Yeah, they migrate through, but you know, a lot of these birds were named where those type specimens were collected and it's not helpful. Another thing we think about a lot is these comparative names. A bird's name, you know, might make sense in terms of like the total family of those birds, in this case least turn. It is the smallest turn around. So like that's a great name, right? But when you start thinking about some other things like Nick and I the other day were talking about like least sandpiper. Yeah, super helpful because it is the smallest sandpiper, but it's always interesting when it's in a flock and maybe you have other birds around it to compare to. Like then it is helpful, but one of the most common misidentifications I see as an e-bird reviewer looking through photos, the number of people that upload something like a lone pectoral sandpiper. This is a bird that superficially looks just like a least sandpiper. The brownish red on the back, the yellowish legs, maybe a droop in the bill. But these things are, I don't know the size, maybe close to twice the size of a least sandpiper. Without the context of anything to compare to, these again comparative names might not be the most helpful. And I also think there's something sort of, there's an inherent sort of lack of dignity when your name is something just in relation to another bird. It's like you don't even have your own thing, you're just like it's in relation to another bird. Like that's such a lame name. Not to mention the fact that for birds like lesser or least, that's sort of an inherently negative name as part of it. It's sort of a downer. And I feel like those aren't right either. In that same idea, here's lesser blackback gull. It's the smaller one, it does have, you know, we can argue what black really is here. If folks can't see in the comment there was the mediocre yellow legs was just suggested as a bird name. That's very good Craig. As Nick was saying, like, I appreciate this one lesser blackback gull. So does lesser imply that there is one that's greater? Turns out there's great blackback gull. It's great because it's the largest gull there is, but it's not even greater. It's not even one of these, like, comparative names. So very funny to me to have this, you know, one, one that's comparative and one that is just great. Also funny to think about like great blackback gull to this point of is it male centric? Is it adult centric? Here. Let me go back. Great adult great blackback gull. Fantastic name. It's got a blackback. It's great in size. And it's a gull. The young ones this is a juvenile doesn't have a blackback. It's still great. He's great. Look at him. But all of a sudden, you know, it's it's another one of these like not so helpful names. And again, like our whole point here is that we're just trying to as we'll come up with our suggestions. We want to acknowledge that like there's it's so tough to to do this to come up with names orange crowned warbler. Yeah, we're just lowering the bar for what's going to happen later on. Orange crowned warbler. Have you ever seen an orange crown on it? Pomeranen. What a cool word. I always thought it had something to do with like marine marine environment or something. It was only in working on this program that I looked up. Pomeranen actually refers to it's to have a nostril covered with a scale is what that word means. Horrible. You're never going to see the nostril covered with a scale. We know semi-palmated plover, the Old World common ringed plover. Oh, it must be the one that doesn't have palmation on its toes. Right. And that was one just to jump in. As Patrick noted in the in the chat, short build and long build dowagers, there are some descriptive names that are just unhelpful, completely red belly book, Parker. You know, if you're if you're on your knees looking at the palmations on the toes of these clovers, then good for you. But that's not the most helpful name that you can come up with. Nick, want to take this fun one? Sure. Not to mention some of my favorite names are completely not descriptive of anything. They're just, you know, made up words. Most of the time named after they're the call of the bird or the translated call of the bird over time. A lot of bird names that we have have their origins in onomatopoeia. So J and crow and birds like that. That's they got their name originally from their their calls. We still have a lot of names like that bobble ink. What a cool name for a bird. You know, if we came up with this by committee now, it probably be like yellow capped blackbird or something. But but I want to leave some room open for us as we consider new names to come up with completely new words that no one has ever heard before. That's extra confusing for folks. But it results in some of the coolest names I think you can get. Some other quick. Yep. Yeah, some other just quick onomatopoeic that you may or may not have known, like, of course, the song of the Eastern wood Pee Wee. Obviously our black calf chickadee has that wonderful chickadee dee dee, the calls that they give. You know, for a long time, I always thought Virio was actually a part of was a reference to to their noise. Virio is actually the translation is a small green bird. Funny, you know, what a fun naming with this this Latin binomial here that the Virio olivaceous actually means like the green little green bird, like great translation. Also funny that, you know, as you see on your screen here, red eyed Virio, like they don't actually get a red eye until they mature. So here's one, like in its hatch year in the fall, when it has a brown eye. So again, now I think I'll I'll stop screen sharing in a second as I turn it over to Nick. And we'll we'll quickly transition into some some of Maine's birds and some of our fun recommendations. So what Doug and I have done and first I should note I've I've opened up the chat for everyone. I'm trusting everyone to be nice. It's fun to share our new names. Please be nice to each other. If anyone starts raising a fuss, we'll close the chat down again. But I want to allow people to suggest their own names. And I'm going to go ahead and start and hopefully that works. You can see that, Doug. It's great. Okay. So what Doug and I have done is we have each selected five epidemic birds that occur in Maine, and we've gone through the process of figuring out what would be some other good names for them. So here we go. I am starting with this bird here, a beautiful bird, the bear was golden eye. And again, I want to keep everybody in mind there is no good name. We don't know if the point of a name should be to make it easy for a new bird or to understand to idea. We don't know if it should be based on something else that we like. So we're just going to go through this and we're going to see how it goes. I'm starting here with a bear is golden eye. One of my favorite birds, a winter visitor down here in Maine. If you're lucky on certain lakes and ponds named for Sir John Barrow, an English Saint civil servant used to spend a lot of time in the Arctic. What are we going to do? What are we going to do with this? Let's stuck here. So this is sexually dimorphic. So the males and females look differently. We could look to its binomial name for a potential new name. Icelandica is the second part. So when this bird was originally sort of known to Western science, it was from its Icelandic population. And this bird was thought of as an Icelandic bird. One of its earlier names was Icelandic whistler. But as you can see from this range map, it's not really Icelandic. I mean, there is a strong population up there, but it's mostly really a Western Rockies, Northwestern Rockies bird. So I don't think using the old name of Icelandic whistler is very helpful. I don't think there really is a geographic name that we could use or anything that's good. This is a classic one where there is a field mark that you should know that is very helpful to the identification. This is one of the times where there are two golden eyes that we have in Maine. They are very similar looking, especially from afar. There's a couple of things that tell them apart. There's the amount of black on the body. There's the head shape. But really, when I was learning Barrow's golden eyes and trying to separate from common golden eyes, the thing you look for is that crescent. You look for the white crescent shaped patch on the head of the male buffalo head right behind the bill. And why is your scanning a flock? You look for the circle, common, circle, common, circle. Oh, there's a crescent. That is a Barrow's golden eye. So for my first attempt at renaming, I am suggesting, oh, and let me say two, these are not made on a bond official recommendations. I don't know if we're going to have recommendations. This is Doug and I just making stuff up off the top of our head. So we're trying to do the best we can. I have come up with crescent faced golden eye. Crescent face golden eye. Doug, what do you think? I love it. It's descriptive. I know what bird you're talking about when you say that name. There we go. And what I'm trying to do here, launching a poll, I would like some engagement here to see what folks think about crescent faced golden eye. You like it? You don't like it? Let me know in the chat. Oh, I got three. Yes. Oh, I got yeses off. Holy, so many yeses. A couple nos. One no. Wow, that makes me feel really good. Awesome. I can't see the chat right now. Oh, teardrop golden eye. I like that. What is it? Gold and I was also put in. Oh, I didn't. Is it teardrop tattoo on your face if you kill someone in prison? Is that right? I wouldn't know. Maybe there's something there. Maybe not. Maybe there's something there. But overall, this is great crescent faced golden eye. Thank you very much for your thoughts. I'm feeling buoyed by them. Let's move on. Let's move on. Cooper's Hawk. We all love the Cooper's Hawk, the famous Asipater, just a big, tough, cool bird named for William Cooper, a conkologist, a naturalist and conkologist, a shell biologist. Didn't really have anything to do with Cooper's Hawk, but was named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte for him in 1828. This is a tough one, Cooper's Hawk. This is a tough one, I think. This is a bird that we all love. Like the golden eye, this is a bird that has a very similar species out there. We all struggle constantly with the sharp shin talk versus Cooper's Hawk identification. However, in my mind, and we get these questions all the time, there isn't a great field mark on the Cooper's Hawk that separates it easily from sharp shin. There are field marks. I know there's the cap and the size and the legs and whatever, but to the average person, none of those things is nearly as helpful as the teardrop on the golden eye. I don't think that I want to choose a name that has anything to do with any field marks. Part of that too is because they're just too cool for a field mark name. These are some of the coolest, most powerful birds we have. Another thing that we did when I was looking back into potential new names is I looked for other older colloquial names, big blue darter, chicken hawk, flying cross, hen hawk, quail hawk, striker, and swift hawk. I'm going to hang on to those striker and swift hawk pieces here. To introduce another topic we haven't talked of, I've spoken of before, which is can we get bird names from other languages? Every American bird knows that when you go to Hawaii, all the birds there, the American common names are the traditional Hawaiian language names for those birds. I want to make sure that as a part of this process going forward that we consider Native American names. Different Native American languages across the country had names for birds. Sometimes they aligned with a Western science idea of a species, sometimes not, but they should all be considered for potential new names. Whether or not they lined up with a particular species, and I really want to ensure in this process that tribes, that Native Americans have a seat at the table and have their opinions considered and their language is considered because these names were in existence long ago. Doug and I did some research into finding out what in Maine, if there were any tribes that had names for birds in Maine, and there yes and no. These were some good sources here. One of one that stuck out to me was this Western Abenaki name Seguanila, which meant smiter hawk. Because I'll tell you, when I look at a Cooper's hawk, smiting is what they do best. Most of the, if you go on Ebert and do a search for photos of Cooper's hawk, almost all of them are like over something dead that has just killed, including this shoveler. They are tough, cool birds and I feel like the essence of them is being tough and cool and including that in the name is something I want to do. So I, again, there's another Cooper's hawk going down. I think the best one is to focus on it being badass. I love that tribal name. I think Seguanila, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, that's the name that I would love. I think it's a unique name. It stands alone for a bird that deserves to be unique and standing alone. It's been lumped up with sharpshin hawk too much. I think it should stand alone as Seguanila. So let me try that. And I've lost my, there we go. I'm going to start the poll here for this one. Oops. I'm going to share results of the Crescent Facebook deny. Thank you. I guess I have to do that. And how, okay, now I'm going to hear. So I'm sort of doing these. Okay. Seguanila, what do we think? 95% of the first one was it's going to be that set of high bar. It's a little more mixed now, but we got 70 30s 65. There was in the chat, there were things like the mentioning Scott Wadensall calls it that calls Cooper is the little tea. Um, crested nape hawk, the blunt shinned hawk. Cool. Get out of here. Was a good one. Little goshawk. So this would be a tough one. This would be a tough, you know, you know, we'd have to learn a new word. We'd have to, you know, figure out how to use it. But I think certainly we can all agree that Native American names and the languages that have existed for these species long ago should certainly be a part of the process and considerations for, for our new names. I'll move on now to, did I share the results? Okay. Stop sharing and back. I'm going to move on now to big nails thrush. Doug will talk about thrushes in more detail. If you want to call on that, he'll say spoiler alert later on, but big nails thrush, a very famous bird in Maine. This is named after Eugene Bicknell. He was a guy involved in the sort of early understanding of the bird that became the Bicknell thrush, identifying them, the Catskills. This is a, this is a bird. Okay. Part of the, this set of thrushes in Maine, we're not going to come up with a great descriptive name for them. These birds here, Bicknell's, Greycheek, Swainson's, Hermit and Veery that you see, all very similar in the way they look. Are there other ways that we could identify them, maybe by their call, you know, famous thrushes are, these thrushes are famous for their songs, all of which are, have differences that you could, you can relate to people, but in my mind, the name coming up with a new name based on the song is sort of not ideal because they're not quite different enough in my opinion. The thing we all recognize that is unique about Bicknell's thrush is its habitat, right? It nests in these high stunted forests way up in, you know, the top of New England mountains. And I think for me, this is the essence of what you want to sort of get across with the need about a Bicknell's thrush, that it, that it, that it lives at this crazy high elevation. And not only that, but that it is an experience to try to go get that, right? We all have a story of the first time we went and saw a Bicknell's thrush, and it involves having to hike the heck up a mountain or drive up the heck up a mountain or get a lift up, but you've got to go way up top. This is some pictures from a trip that Doug and I and some friends took this past summer, up to the top of Surgilove. We hiked up, started in the, in the beautiful sunshine, and then just, we hit torrential rain and wind and craziness. We were walking around, we had thought we had no chance of seeing Bicknell's thrush. Everything was down on the ground. The last possible spot before we get out of their habitat, we saw one. Look how excited I am. You know, we were all so pumped. That's sort of the essence of, of the experience of a Bicknell's thrush, I think. And so I wanted to make sure that we named it after that. And so what I went with is summit thrush, summit thrush. When you see this bird, you feel like you've conquered the summit of birding. You are literally at the summit of a mountain, most likely, unless you're one of those people who thinks they can identify them in, in migration. So I think summit thrush, I think it's a cool name. And I want to see what you all think about this one. That was actually also put in the chat. Was it? Before I did it? Yeah, David came up as soon as you showed it. Montaigne thrush. Couple of people went with the Krumhol's thrush. Yeah, that's a cool one. Karen mentioned why not Hispaniola thrush to give it a nod to its wintering grounds, non-breeding grounds, we should say. That's another thing, our northern centric naming rights. Yeah. Well, but I don't know, I'm at 97% right now. And that feels pretty good to me. I'm going to end the poll right there before it goes bad. Look at that. I feel good about that summit thrush. Awesome. I'm going to go even a little faster. I know I want to make sure that we're on time. Do I have two more? Yeah, Lincoln's sparrow. A beautiful bird, a very underrated sparrow, in my opinion. A gorgeous little bird. The only bird currently named for someone from Maine. Thomas Lincoln of Denny'sville was a friend of John James Audubon. This is such a fantastic little bird. Because it's the only bird named after someone from Maine, I'm wondering, hey, could we call it the Maine sparrow? Why give up something like that? No, we should not do that. This bird is not unique to Maine in any way. It breeds across the country down into California. We should not name it the Maine sparrow. What should we name it after? This is kind of a tough one. Doug and I talked a little bit about this. This is a little tough one. This is one that I find most commonly is confused with the song sparrow. And when we talk about sort of reliable ID features for this, there is some of the song, but I find it's really the contrast between the white belly and the buffy chest with the fine streaking as compared to sort of the sloppy streaking on a song sparrow's breast there on the side. On ebird, they put it as like a pen and ink drawing on the Lincoln sparrow versus an oil painting on the song sparrow. I like that a lot. And I think this bird overall is just, when you see one, it's such a clean, sort of nice looking tight bird. This is the picture of its back. Look how just like clean and smart looking that is. And so when I was taking your names, I went through some of the synonyms for sort of well-dressed, classy, dashing, rakish, spry, stylish. I landed on this one, the dapper sparrow. The dapper sparrow. I love it. I think it's befitting this bird. I think it doesn't get much respect now as it is. It's sort of lumped in this ambiguous thing. But I think if people are saying, oh, dapper sparrow, I want to go see that. I don't know what you think. Let me find my poll here. Let's see. I'm bracing myself for, oops, back. I'm bracing myself for this one. I won't let me launch it. Sorry, hold on. I guess I didn't end the sharing the other one. There we go. And all right, let me see. Dapper sparrow, what do you got? Be kind. Yes. Oh, doing good. Oh, bounce back for 75%. 36, say no. What, Doug, what else do we have in the chat? Oh, this is my worst yet. A couple of people put buff breasted sparrow in the chat early on. It's a good one for that color. Jen, as you were describing some of the artistic techniques with the etching sparrow, which you could imagine carving out, doing a little etching to make this buffed sparrow and formal sparrow. Formal sparrow. This is my worst yet, 57%, 43%. No, that's okay. I'm just doing my best. I think the crispness and beauty of the plumage of this bird is what sets it apart. And so I'll go. Doug, do we want to do our fifth or should we turn over to you? Let's do it. I don't know. Okay. I'm going to do my fifth. I'll go quickly. Real bored of this. They can leave if we're down. Sure. You can drop off. I'm having fun. This is what I have not talked to Doug about. He does not know what I named this one. This isn't my fanciest name. It's okay. Leech is Storm Petrel. Holy cow. A very cool sort of secretive shore bird that nests off some islands on the main coast named after an English zoologist, William Elford Leech. Very cool bird. A tough one to name. So there are 25 different species of storm petrels around the world. They each are generally have the same sort of body, tube nose seabird, brownish gray, blackish back, secondary coberts of some contrasting color, oftentimes a white rum. There isn't really a ton about the leeches storm petrel that sets us apart by its physical characteristics. Compared to the Wilson storm petrel, the other common one we have in Maine, this one is larger and longer winged, but that doesn't really work across its range. That the scientific name means basically white rump, which is also not helpful because they all have white rump. I looked a little bit into the birds of Maine, this famous old book that included some colloquial names. And one of the names they had was the Kerry chicken. I wanted to know what the Kerry chicken was. Did you guys know that mother Kerry was a supernatural figure personifying the cruel and threatening sea in the imagination of 18th and 19th century sailors, possibly married to Davy Jones? Hey, I learned something new every day, but we're not doing eponyms. So we can't do Kerry's chicken. We have to leave her out of it. What are some other unusual things about this bird? One is its flight style, right? So folks who see it out to sea know that it flies like a bat. It sort of bounces around really erratically. That could be sort of a helpful name for undo. You could do bat-like storm petrol. That's just too many hyphens in there. Erratic storm petrol, maybe. I don't know. The other thing that is cool is that these birds are pretty much strictly nocturnal around their breeding grounds. They are wary of predation from gulls and scuas and other birds. They come and go from their burrows at night. I lean into that a little bit for my suggested name, which is the Midnight Storm Petrol. I think it's an evocative name. You know that you have to get lucky to see them. I couldn't find a better word for night, but I think Midnight Storm Petrol, I'm getting handed in the poll. Fourth storm petrol I see, not a leech storm petrol, wavering storm petrol. Melissa, that's a good name. Not too bad. All right. 64 say yes for midnight. Thank you for my people out there. We'll go there. Those are my five. I'm going to turn it over to Doug, who does a much better power point than I do for him to do his five. As I'm pulling it up, I want to acknowledge, sorry, I lost the name. Was it Jane? Someone put in fork-tailed storm petrol. This is one of the toughest things I've learned. There's a lot of really good names that are already taken. There already is a fork-tailed storm petrol. I'll do my best to avoid names already used. Are you guys are looking at my... Yes, let's do it. Yeah. Okay. So to dive right in, some of the birds that I did, I started with Swainson's Thrush. Why not? It's 2023. Let's use the technology we have available to us. The smartest thing on the planet, as some might want us to believe, is chat GPT. So I asked chat GPT, what would be a good new name for Swainson's Thrush? And I do like that. It answered with, choosing a new name for a species involves careful consideration for its characteristics, habitats, and any distinguishing features. And it says, since I don't have specific information about Swainson's Thrush, I'll suggest a general name that reflects the bird's traits. And it came up with the forest serenade thrush, which is a little bit of a mouthful for me. Not going to settle on that. So let's keep looking. Just like Nick did, I went to the 1908 Birds of Maine by... or a night. One of the several names that were listed here, so you can see there's Swainson's Thrush. All of it back to we'll talk about in a second. The fly catching thrush I thought was cool, but I really liked Mosquito Thrush, because you'll often, when you're looking at a Swainson's Thrush, you're probably in some habitat that you're getting destroyed by mosquitoes. So I like that as a name. Another Native American name, the Penobscot here in Maine, only had one word to describe all the species of thrushes in Maine, but I do like, again, thinking about the behavior of these birds. The translation meant the evening collar, which was fun to kind of think of tying in with this. Then my mind took this big pivot towards taxonomy and thinking about how these birds are distributed. I mentioned a lot of people know Swainson's Thrush here in the east as all of backed thrush. So I was like, that's it. That's a nice descriptive. The problem is, Swainson's Thrush currently makes up a number of subspecies. You can see them all listed here. So we have the all of backed here in the east, and it does expand all the way up into Alaska, which, fun fact, the one up in Alaska is called Incanus, if that's the right way to say it, which is like Hori-headed or Hori-naped. So if we could split all of these, fast forward taxonomy and get the Hori-headed thrush. I need more thrushes. So I want to let's maintain all of back and rust it back in the hope that someday these birds get split. So can't use those names. The song, much as Nick talked about the song of Bichnell's, this is just showing a spectrogram frequency over time. This is a spectrogram of Swainson's Thrush song. It's very unique. It has a nice ascending nature to it, but it's kind of a mouth mouthful to say the the crescendo songed thrush. Upscale thrush says Craig Kazan. So that's unique, but that's that's a tough one. Birders that like going out at night and listening to nocturnal flight calls, Swainson's Thrush has one of the most distinct NFCs of any any bird that you're going to hear migrating. And it was fun to think about because the vast majority of Swainson's Thrushes that I hear are usually migrating birds at night. You can go out on a good spring or especially fall night and hear dozens, if not hundreds of them fly over with this this call that sounds just like a spring peeper. So how could we tie in like the spring peeper thrush? Or I was looking at the the genus that spring peepers are in is Pseudocris, which actually translates to fake locusts. So if they if they're like the fake spring peeper, are they the fake, fake locusts? Or does the double negative work and now they're like the locust thrush? No, I didn't go with any of these. This is the fun thought process to go through with all of it. To try and narrow in on a name, I did look at, you know, these are a couple things from the the Sibley guide, looking at the Collins guide, the most popular guide for most European birds. And everywhere you look, the birds always described as having these spectacles, distinct spectacles or these prominent eye ring. So I thought like spectacled thrush would be a great name, except there's much like our forktail storm petrol, there's already a bird named spectacled thrush. Fun looking on the species account that they are also known as the bear eyed thrush. So I wish we could let's let's rename that one as well, give us spectacled back. But keeping that that in mind, I really like referencing this this unique eye. As Nick mentioned, I have one big problem with the word thrush is that thrushes should be things in the genus Tertus, things like our sooty thrush, white eyed thrush, all of these large thrushes, things like American Robin shouldn't be called a Robin, it should be called a thrush. It should be hammered in the pole for this. Oh, I bet. So Swainson's thrush is a catharist thrush. Everywhere else, catharist thrushes are called nightingale thrush, which is such a beautiful mouthful of a name. So if we're going with a mouthful of a name, why not the buffering nightingale thrush? I'll tell you why not because I break 50 percent. Oh, no, no, here we go. I should say too in the chat, Tim flight, the lesser summit thrush, which I'm not going to fly, but I love it. Goggle thrush as Jen. I'm just going to end this here before this gets any uglier. That is a 62 percent no dice nightingale thrush. Too many hyphens. Too many hyphens. Oh, just enough. I see what you're saying. All right. It can only get better from here. I hope so. This will be a much faster one because it's easy. There's no disputing what this bird should be called. So Bonaparte's gull. There are lots of gulls in the world. Lots of different seagulls that all have very similar field marks. Seagulls are just confusing. There are too many gulls of the sea. Fortunately, Bonaparte's gull is a gull of the tree. It is the only gull that regularly nests in trees. So let's call this the tree gull. The tree gull. I love it. It's not useful, perhaps, unless you're up on the breeding grounds. But I think in terms of it being what actually separates this from all other gulls, like the rind with the tree gull, it's going to confuse a lot of people. Do you say tree gull or seagull? Yeah. I love it. And you're getting some support. Getting some strong support. Dainty gull says, Ann, black-headed tree gull. I love it. That was a fun one. There is the black-headed gull, which is a European species. So someone I was chatting with was like, call it the European black-headed gull and the American black-headed gull. We love long names. Well, good job. You're in the positive this time. 69 to 31. Nice. Nelson Sparrow. And sorry, I know Nick was doing good job honoring these people. I'm not trying to leave out names, but do want to not discredit any of these names that are out there. So anyways, Nelson Sparrow, actually a bird near and dear to my heart after working in the Scarborough Marsh for many years, helping with some demographic studies of these birds. I've held more of these birds in my hand than any other. I do love the name Nelson's, but a fun one to look at was some of the different translations around the world, which you can get on the Birds of the World website. I really, looking down these, a lot of them do just translate back into Nelson Sparrow. But this one, the Icelandic word, which according to Google Translate, is pronounced the, if I say this right, the vice-atitle gore, which I think, talk about a fun name. I wish I could walk through the Scarborough Marsh and just point out the vice-atitle gore calling over there. We're getting people saying no in the chat already. Nice. This is why I'm not on that. One word that I wish that we could take back because it's not using enough bird names. So John James Audubon, as we've discussed, has kind of interesting history, not only in some of his incredibly racist actions, but also in his kind of ornithological background, there are some species that can really be called into question. Like one of these mysteries here, a bird that he illustrated called the carbonated swamp warbler. There's a lot of questions, whether this was a possible hybrid that he just found in one location, whether the bird was completely fabricated at all. Carbonated, I'll quickly acknowledge, is a reference to this kind of carbon, this burnt, sooty look that you get on birds. The only other carbonated bird we have here is this carbonated Sierra Finch. You can see that nice black belly on it. Nelson Sparrow does not have that wash, per se, but that is one of the coolest words that's not used enough. And if you have ever heard a Nelson Sparrow, has one of the most distinctive noises it's often described as either hot water hitting a pan or cracking open a carbonated beverage, that wonderful little. So why shouldn't we call Nelson Sparrow carbonated Sparrow? I love it. I love it. It's an outstanding word. It is accurate and helpful, but still creative and evocative. I'm all for it. Let's see. We also do have sizzling Sparrow, a couple of votes for sizzling Sparrow, soda pop Sparrow, bringing back sharp tail Sparrow. You like it. Yeah. Could do that. While we let this run for one second, it's a very funny thing that in 1995, when these two species were split, it used to be sharp tailed Sparrow. It was split into the salt marsh sharp tailed Sparrow and the Nelson's sharp tailed Sparrow. And then it was like 2000, I don't know the year. Not that long ago, the names were shortened just to be easier to say. So this idea that we need to preserve some names it's kind of silly to me to just think that we just shorten these names to make them easier to say. So clearly I like the long hyphenated ones, but we have a fajita Sparrow, which is as someone who hasn't had dinner yet is a great option. I think a couple more votes for sizzling and soda pop fizzy flood tide. Good times, but 80% on carbonated. Good job. Last couple here, Wilson's warbler. Fun bird named after Alexander Wilson, the option called the father of American orthology who, you know, again, a great person to have a bird named after, but if we're going to be removing all of these, these eponyms, let's come up with a better name. I want to start by saying nothing yellow. There are already too many. We have yellow warbler. We've got yellow throat, which isn't even the yellow throated warbler. I want no nothing with yellow in it. So I was trying to think about this bird when I started birding always trying to come up with like different either mnemonics or ways to remember a bird name. And I would always remember it as Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, if anyone knew the hero.fandom.com considers Mr. Wilson a do-gooder. Fun fact, learned that today. But in my memory, I always thought that he had a little toupee. I guess he was only bald in the cartoons. But I would always remember his, I can just see little Dennis the Menace going after his poor neighbor here. So I would always make that association of having like that little toupee, the little dark cap with Mr. Wilson. Toupees can really do a lot for anyone. We can get a little, if folks don't remember this episode of Seinfeld. He does look great there, I will say. He does look great. This is a great scene talking to the woman at the restaurant who kicks her chair out for him. This is also Jason Alexander, a little nod to Alexander Wilson. Just saying this all, it all ties that a toupee is really not appreciated enough. So let's call this the toupee war. I hate it. And I also love it. You know, we talked about trying to give birds their dignity back. I'm not sure this accomplishes that. There are as, oh, we're, and you're getting hammered, where there are, you know, a Yamaha Warbler or something, you know, beret. There's lots of hats that are equivalent of this thing, a beret, a fez, any, lots of sort of, you know, skull cap area hats could work here. But it does look like a toupee. It's sort of a black, hairy thing that on there. So it's accurate whether people like it or not. And guess what? They don't like it. 68 say no dice, two paid warbler. If, listen to me, if you are, if you were a casual person walking by a bird walk, and they said, oh, look, here comes a two paid warbler, you tell me you wouldn't stop and look at that bird. This would introduce more new people to birds than any other, anything else. The last one. And I'm glad I don't have the chat open anymore. It helped me get through this. Blackburnian warbler is a fun one because I think a lot of people don't realize that this is an eponym named after Anne or Anna Blackburn, an English naturalist. And it was actually Alexander Wilson who named this bird after Lady Blackburn. This was another fun one. Which was it here? Sorry. The translations are not my, my pronunciations, I should say. Fitchin Witzinger was the German, again, pardon my pronunciation, but Fitchin Witzinger, I thought was another, that would just be a fun word to get to say when you're pointing up at something like Blackburnian warbler high up in the treetops. Some of the other names actually translated to spruce warbler, which I actually really liked thinking about some of the, the habitats that you see these in. We do have a bunch of warblers that are named, you know, after different plants that you're likely to see them in, even once you're unlikely to see them in. So, so spruce warbler, I did really like, but these birds, the color, the way, you know, the way that you're looking up through, you know, a pinhole in the forest. And as soon as you see these bright glowing colors, the number of times I've said like, oh, that bird looks like it's on fire. Even, you know, yes, the males are stunning. But even when you see some of these, you know, drabber, juvenile birds, or even females in the fall, they still just have this nice glow to them. So to come up with a new name for Blackburnian warbler, I really liked the, the fire faced warbler has. It will be hard to name this bird after anything other than the bright orange on its face. It is the, it's the thing everybody remembers, I think. And we were getting a lot of similar ones in the chat, flame-throated warbler, fire-throated warbler. They said the ABA podcast, an ember warbler, day glow warbler, some other good ones, fire-throated, I love it. I think fire-throated. Flame-throated is unfortunately taken by Central American and Costa Rica is a great place to see flame-throated. Cool compared. Very cool. You've got the crowd on board. 77% say, say, good job, well done. Way to end on a high note. And we are ending on a high note, everyone. Look, isn't this fun to do? This is an opportunity that our modern people have never had, you know, we have never had a say in the names of our birds. And so I and Doug, we are, you know, this is exciting. We get a chance to sit down and think about these birds to look at them anew, to think about what makes them them and to understand, you know, what we want to call them later on. So my final words is thank you, everyone, for coming. I'm putting the donate link back in the chat. If you appreciate this type of thing, in Maine, this is, this is Maine Audubon doing our fun thing. So we appreciate any donations you may have. Doug, any final thoughts? No, I'll just reiterate the thank you. I'll encourage folks to join us. Again, we have a lot of really fun programs, especially coming up with the new year, our birding basic series starting the first week of January. I think next week we've got virtual birding on Tuesday, Monday, Monday night, might be with Andy Cappanose, just looking at birds all over the world on some webcams. You can bird from your, the comfort of your home. So we've got all sorts of fun stuff and I hope to see a bunch of you either in person or virtually. Monday says, Jen, for virtual birding program. Thanks everyone for coming. Have a great night and good birding.