Tag: bird

Renaming Birds: Steller’s Eider

Christina Wilsdon

This dapper duck is a male Steller’s Eider (Polysticta stelleri), a bird that breeds in far north Arctic regions and winters in what, to our way of thinking, are locations that are just as chilly (Aleutian Islands, northern Scandinavia, and the like).

This species is named after Georg Wilhelm Steller, a physician, naturalist, and explorer who introduced Western scientists to a variety of animals (and also endured a shipwreck and survived months on an island now called Bering Island while saving fellow crew members from dying of scurvy).

Male Steller’s Eider photographed by Ron Knight, Wiki Commons image

Steller had a menagerie of animals named after him in addition to this sea duck: a jay, a sea eagle, a sea lion, a sculpin, and a sea cow, and that’s just the ones in which he appears in common names. (Sadly, the Steller’s sea cow was hunted to extinction within a few decades of its being described by Steller.)

But with eponymous bird names giving way to new titles, what could the Steller’s Eider be called instead?

Well, the Finnish people have a word for it that actually reflects a modern supposition about the species’ genetics: Allihaahka (alli is “Long-Tailed Duck,” haahka is “eider”). According to one study, Steller’s Eider may be a species that evolved via “hybrid speciation,” a long-ago “gene flow” between two different kinds of birds. But it seems unlikely this name would catch on in North America. Nor would its German name, Scheckente, “piebald duck,” referring to its bold black and white markings (which reflects its scientific name, too: polustiktos means “many spotted” in Greek).

This eider is known as a “soldier duck” in Alaska for its habit of swimming in single file, but the name that really stands out in literature about the far north is the Inupiat name Igniquaqtuq. This name is inspired by the golden sheen on the duck’s belly and breast and is translated variously as “the duck that sat in the campfire,” “duck that sat in fire,” and “the bird who travels with fire” (this site has wonderful information about indigenous names for birds). And so this sea duck could glory in the terrific rhyming name Fire Eider.

It would be in good company with other birds whose markings gave rise to legends involving fire. In Iroquois lore, for example, the American Robin once had a pure white breast, but because it saved a man from freezing to death by carrying a live coal and kindling to start a campfire and then tended it by fanning it with its wings, its feathers first became spotted and then turned rusty red–a wonderful summary of the actual bird’s transition from a polka-dotted youngster to a red-breasted adult.

Likewise, in European lore, the European Robin fanned embers to warm the baby Jesus and thus burned its feathers forever red. (In another story, the red is a bloodstain caused by the bird’s efforts to pluck merciless thorns from Jesus’s crown on Golgotha.)

None of the other eiders have eponymous names. One splendidly marked species bears the royal name King Eider, a goggle-faced species is aptly named Spectacled Eider, and the third is the Common Eider. The Common Eider in this photos appears to be giving some side-eye about being called “common.”

Common Eider photo courtesy WikiCommons (c) Mike Pennington.

Name That Bird!

Christina Wilsdon

Feathers are flying now that the American Ornithological Society has decided to rename all bird species in the Americas that are named after people. The main reason for this decision is to eradicate names of people with racist or colonial associations. It paves the way for the creation of new names that focus on the birds themselves.

I’ve always idly thought I’d love to have a job naming racehorses or paint colors, so I’m interested in seeing what the AOS comes up with. (If they put votes out to the public, I hope they take care not to repeat the actions of the British agency that enlisted the public in naming a research vessel back in 2016, or we’ll end up with a lot of birds being called Birdy McBirdface.)

The bird enlisted in many articles to showcase the changes to come is the Wilson’s warbler, Cardellina pusilla, a lively little bird clad in bright yellow and olive green. The male sports a jaunty black cap, the female a paler version that is typically olive.

What to call this sprite?

Male Wilson’s Warbler (photo courtesy of Alaska Science Center, photographer Rachel M. Richardson)

It’s not like its name hasn’t changed in the past. For a start, its scientific name wasn’t always Cardellina pusilla. (Cardellina derives from an Italian word that refers to the European goldfinch, and pusilla is Latin for “very small.”) Naturalist Alexander Wilson, who first described the bird scientifically in 1811, called it Muscicapa pusilla (Muscicapa translates to “flycatcher”).

The bird was subsequently shuffled between genera for the next few decades until it became Wilsonia pusilla in 1899. And there it perched until another relocation in 2011 put it into the genus Cardellina. A lot of other warblers also found themselves alighting in new genera at that time–you can read about that here.

But the warbler doesn’t stand on ceremony, so it’s not going to insist you call it by its scientific name. Wilson himself called it the “green black-capt flycatcher.” Many people in online comment sections suggest “black-capped yellow warbler,” though some point out that this name sidelines the female bird (a tendency that’s not unusual in common bird names).

Past common names for this species aren’t exactly an exciting treasure trove of monikers: green black-capped warbler, Wilson’s blackcap, Wilson’s black-capped flycatching warbler (a lot of name to stick to a bird that weighs 0.4 ounces, or less than an empty soda can), and golden pileolated warbler (pileolated being a schmancy word for “crested”).

Well, Wilson’s Warbler, one can only hope great things are in store for you with your new name. Maybe the official name-granters will channel the imagination and zest of whoever named the hummingbirds. Some hummers are named after people, but most of them flaunt dazzling, descriptive names: Amethyst Woodstar, Black-billed Streamertail, Green-Backed Firecrown, Turquoise-Throated Puffleg, Booted Racket-Tail, and Spangled Coquette, just to name a few.