Hi all, and thanks as always for reading! Sorry for the long (for me) lapse in posts. Things have been a bit busy of late, and it's been tough to carve time out to sit down and craft a new piece. But here we are, and away we go.
An Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis) nestles among the leaves of an American Beech (Fagus grandifolia). This species is the consummate tree bat, and its range mirrors that of the great eastern deciduous forest, which spans the eastern half of the U.S., stretching from the Gulf Coast into southern Canada.Ohio Birds and Biodiversity
A romp through the diverse flora and fauna of Ohio. From Timber Rattlesnakes to Prairie Warblers to Lakeside Daisies to Woodchucks, you'll eventually see it here, if it isn't already.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Eastern Red Bats, moths, and leaf litter
Monday, March 4, 2024
Bewick's Swan: An Ohio First
I attended the annual Ohio Bluebird Society's annual meeting last Saturday, March 2, to speak about moths. Little known fact: The majority of the Eastern Bluebird's non-winter diet is moth caterpillars. Shauna and I had a great time, met lots of people, and I saw scads of friends that I haven't seen in a while. The Society is quite active and about 140 people were in attendance.
Afterwards, Shauna and I took the long way home, in order to visit Killbuck Marsh - one of the largest interior wetland complexes in Ohio. Killbuck lures scads of migratory waterfowl in spring, including large flocks of Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus). On February 23, Josh Yoder located a "Bewick's" Swan in a large flock of Tundra Swans, and I'd wanted to get up there to see it ever since. That bird was our primary target on this trip, and it wasn't hard to find, especially as many birders were on the scene.
The Bewick's Swan is now (mostly) considered to be a subspecies of the Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus bewickii). However, it has been considered a separate species in the past, and the American Ornithological Union didn't lump it into the Tundra Swan until 1983. While most authorities dealing with avian nomenclature and taxonomy consider it to be a subspecies at present, Avibase separates the two.
A pair of Tundra Swans drops in, landing gear extended. Don't expect National Geo-caliber imagery in this post. The flock of Tundra Swans that our target fraternized with was a LONG way across the marsh. Maybe 200 yards or so, so it took some photographic oomph to even get the documentary shots that I did. I used my Canon 800mm coupled with a 1.4x extender (1120mm) and that's generally not the ticket for sharp vibrant shots on a heavily overcast day. Nonetheless, the rig did allow me to capture diagnostic details of the bird in question.Thursday, February 29, 2024
The first wildflowers erupt
Ivy-leaved Speedwell (Veronica hederifolia) was in full bloom on south-facing slopes of the Ohio River last Saturday, February 24. Shauna Weyrauch and I visited the deep south of Ohio last weekend seeking, among other things, early flora. This species was not a primary target. Little Eurasian weeds such as this speedwell are always among the first flowers to bloom, and some of them, such as Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) can be found in flower any month of the year. On this excursion, native plants were our goal, but I could not resist an image of the showy speedwell flower.Our first stop was the Arc of Appalachia's Chalet Nivale Preserve in Adams County. The "Nivale" in the name refers to Trillium nivale, or Snow Trillium. Thousands of the tiny lily relatives occur there, and it is the first of Ohio's seven trillium species (used to have eight. Trillium cernuum is considered extirpated and was only documented once, in 1879 in Lake County) to bloom.
A brave Virginia Bluebell (Mertensia virginica) thrusts forth a flower and several buds. Our next stop was the Arc of Appalachia's Ohio River Bluffs Preserve, which overlooks the Ohio River and the hills of Kentucky. The steep south-facing wooded slopes always spawn early wildflowers, often a week or more before other sites in southern Ohio.
Unsurprising but always welcome was the aptly named Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa). The elfin parsley is to be expected by late February, but while there were scores of rosettes, this was one of few flowering specimens that we saw.
Friday, February 23, 2024
Nature/Opinion: American Ornithological Society set to rename honorific birds
Nature/Opinion: American Ornithological Society set to rename honorific birds
February 18, 2024
To most non-birders, the proposed renaming of honorifically named species is probably a mild absurdity - something straight out of the ONION. To those of us within the circle, it is more serious due to understanding the mass destabilization of ornithological nomenclature that will result. An oft-used argument by proponents is "names change all of the time". In other words, we should be used to shifting nomenclature. But that's not true, at least regarding English (common) names. Since the inaugural AOS (formerly American Ornithological Union) checklist came out in 1886, less than one English name has changed annually on average (see my commentary on warbler names in the column). In contrast, there has been a blizzard of changes with scientific names, but these go largely unnoticed by birders, very few of whom learn those names. English names are far more important in daily communication. With that said, no one that I know of who is against this proposal is against changing names that are demonstrably harmful. A great example of a legitimate change dates back to 2000, when the Oldsquaw was renamed Long-tailed Duck (from Wikipedia: "In 2000, the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) formally adopted the name long-tailed duck, in response to petitioning by a group of biologists who feared that the former name would be offensive to Native American tribes whose help was required for conservation efforts."). We think that any proposed changes should be submitted on a case-by-case basis, as has been the model. Not an arbitrary and capricious mass removal of all eponyms.
Jim McCormac
The little-known U.S.-based American Ornithological Society (AOS) managed to make news on Nov. 1, 2023. That day, the 2,800-member academic organization announced that it would be changing all honorific names of birds in the Americas. That includes North, Central and South America, and associated islands. In all, the plan involves about 150 species. The AOS (formerly American Ornithological Union) is the long-standing authority for American bird names. A precise timetable for the changes has yet to be established.
In the U.S. and Canada, about 80 species are slated for rebranding, and 35 of them occur — or have occurred — in Ohio. Buckeye State birds include well-known species such as Bonaparte’s gull, Cooper’s hawk, Wilson’s snipe, and — in a double whammy to Wilson — Wilson’s warbler. In all, 35 honorifically named species on the Ohio list, or about 8% of the state list of 445 species, will be renamed.
Why the change? In the words of the AOS: “The AOS commits to changing all English-language names of birds within its geographic jurisdiction that are named directly after people (eponyms), along with other names deemed offensive and exclusionary…”
A group known as Bird Names for Birds was the impetus for the AOS nomenclatural shift, and they state: “Eponyms… and honorific common bird names are problematic because they perpetuate colonialism and the racism associated with it. The names that these birds currently have — for example, Bachman’s sparrow — represent and remember people (mainly white men) who often have objectively horrible pasts and do not uphold the morals and standards the bird community should memorialize.”
There are two major prongs to this movement: 1) Honorees are racist or otherwise bad people, therefore their names are exclusionary, and 2) bird names should be descriptive of the bird.
A major problem with No. 1 is that most people associated with eponymous bird names were not racist, or at least the AOS has not presented many cases for it. The idea seems to be to cast them all out — a wholesale purge of eponyms, ensuring the bad are deleted, even if the good are collateral damage. This decision was rendered by a committee of 19 people. That would be the AOS council, who did not poll birders at large, people in other countries that would be impacted, or even their own membership. In other words, the council was exclusionary.
This clumsy effort to rewrite history is fraught with problems. The aforementioned Alexander Wilson — namesake to the snipe, warbler and three other species — was a passionate ornithologist who lived for birds. He essentially worked himself to death by the age of 47 but not before becoming known as the Father of American Ornithology.
The reverend John Bachman — mentioned above — illustrates the problems of judging people by the standards of two centuries later. While Bachman owned slaves, which should never have been acceptable even in his day but unfortunately was, paradoxically he also was a leader in creating opportunities for Black people. Bachman invited people of color to join his congregation, which many did, and helped Blacks achieve positions that were unattainable at that time. One of his tutees was Daniel Payne, who went on to become a founder of Wilberforce University in Ohio and became one of its first presidents — the first Black college president in the United States.
The idea that honorific bird names are exclusionary is nonsensical. A leading advocate for changing eponymous bird names is field guide author Kenn Kaufman. Ironically, he wrote the following in a post supporting the eponym purge on his eponymously named Kaufman Field Guide blog: “Do eponymous names naturally lead to curiosity about the persons so recognized? I don’t think so. If we were to poll the ornithologists and serious birders of North America, I suspect that not one in a thousand would know who Botteri was (of Botteri’s Sparrow) or who Williamson was (of Williamson’s Sapsucker)… All these names have been there in the field guides and other books for many years, but hardly anyone has been inspired to say, ‘Gee, who was Heermann? Who was Hutton?’”
If no one knows who these people are, how can their names be exclusionary?
The other argument in favor of changing honorific names centers on the opportunity to provide more descriptive names. That opens a robust can of worms. Many non-eponymous names are hardly descriptive. Who knows what mallard means? Or sees the hairs on a hairy woodpecker. Few have seen the “red belly” on a red-bellied woodpecker. Carolina chickadee? They’re common in Ohio. Purple finches are hardly purple. All sparrows sing, not just the song sparrow. Do all these and scores of other non-descriptive names also have to be changed? And re-namers best be cautious. An oft-proposed alternate name for Kirtland’s warbler (named for Ohio naturalist Jared Kirtland) is jack pine warbler. Jack pine’s scientific name is Pinus banksiana. The specific epithet honors English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. Dig deep enough into his history, and flaws will be found. As I’m sure historians in 2224 will find character defects in many of us.
One huge asset that ornithology has that very few other disciplines in the natural sciences have is a stable system of English names. English bird names are the currency of the masses (in English-speaking places). They allow all of us to speak on the same page, and greatly facilitate learning by newcomers. Furthermore, English names tend to be far more stable than scientific names (which very few birders know). Of the 38 species of breeding warblers in eastern North America (five are eponymously named), 33 still have the same English name as first published in the AOS’s inaugural checklist of North American birds in 1886 (including all five eponyms). Contrarily, 138 years later 31 of those 38 warblers have different scientific names. A large-scale change in English names will result in years of confusion, outdated field guides, and numerous other long-lasting hassles.
Resistance to the proposed AOS name changes has been widespread and opponents probably greatly outnumber proponents. To me and many others, the logic behind purging eponyms is largely baseless — at least its advocates have failed to make much of a case. The logic behind arguments for retaining existing names makes far more sense and maintains long-established stability.
Honorific names permeate science, and elsewhere. Legions of buildings, cities and towns, endowments and scholarships, streets, and much more are named honorifically. If truly bad names exist within these groups, change them as needed. But a blanket purge of honorific bird names by a tiny group of people in one area of the globe — whose changes are unlikely to be widely accepted — smacks of pretentious virtue signaling by out of touch elitists.
To learn more about rationales for changing bird names, visit the AOS website: English Bird Names Project - American Ornithological Society (americanornithology.org). For dissenting opinions, including some from leading ornithologists, visit the Change.org petition to AOS leadership.
Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature atwww.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Bird photography talk: The Art and Science of Shooting Birds
Monday, February 5, 2024
Fishing spiders in Ohio? It's true.
Spiders are all around us. About 650 species are found in Ohio alone. Numerous species, most likely, are on your property and in your house. In warm seasons, a gentle rain of spiderlings wafts through the air. They disperse to new terrain soon after hatching by “ballooning”; sending out a silken strand that catches a breeze and takes them aloft. Fortunately for the arachnophobe, these spiderlings and the vast majority of spiders go unseen by most people.
Spiders are an important part of food webs – both as predator and prey – and engage in amazing behavior. Many are artistically painted in showy hues, or are ornate in their markings. Their production of silk and use thereof is highly advanced, and some species have the ability to spin incredibly intricate webs.
On September 7, 2013, I was with a group of colleagues late at night in the wilds of Adams County, Ohio. We were seeking caterpillars, and thus inspecting vegetation with flashlights. Suddenly, my beam picked up the eye shine of a big spider about twenty feet away and eight feet up in a redbud tree. I clambered up on some logs to get on the spider’s level, and was treated to the spectacle of a tarantula-sized nursery web spider guarding a nest.
I knew it was one of the fishing spiders, a group within the nursery web spider family. The family is so-named because the females create silken nests (nurseries) and guard the spiderlings for a week or so until they disperse. Many of the fishing spider species in this group are highly aquatic and can even catch small fish.
But this fishing spider was not like any I had seen. The head was a striking ivory-white, very different than the common fishing spiders that I was familiar with. I took photos, one of which accompanies this article. It didn’t take long to identify it: white-banded fishing spider (Dolomedes albineus). A later literature review showed no Ohio records of this southern species. Major excitement! A new spider for Ohio, and a particularly spectacular one!
A few weeks later I learned that another had been documented near Akron, about the time I found mine. Later yet, it came to light that a white-banded fishing spider had been found in 2012 in Perry County. The latter, discovered by moth expert Diane Brooks, was the first state record.
There is no question that white-banded fishing spiders are expanding northward. Spiders are not nearly so well known as birds or mammals, and thus the literature is often sparse. Still, several documents that mention this species from over a century ago describe it as a species of southern swamps, sometimes around cypress trees.
By 1973, white-banded fishing spiders had made it to Kentucky. A paper on fishing spiders published that year documented the northern limits of white-banded fishing spider as two southern Kentucky counties.
Fast forward to today. There are now dozens of records from Ohio, mostly east of a line from Cincinnati to Cleveland. There are also many records from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. At least one has reached the state up north, courtesy a 2020 record from southern Michigan. Apparently, all of the first records from all of these states date to within the last decade.
Why the recent expansion? Mean winter temperatures probably play a big role in defining the northern limits of white-banded fishing spiders (and many other insects and spiders). They overwinter as adults and can live for two years. As winters have gotten warmer, the spiders can expand their limits, and their quick expansion is abetted by the highly mobile balloon dispersal of the juveniles. Other factors may also be in play. Whatever the case, a very cool spider is now an Ohio resident.
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Scores of English name changes to birds are apparently coming
A male Kirtland's Warbler sings from a jack pine. One of the rarest warblers, its population is only about 4,500 birds. I photographed this one on May 24, 2019, in northern Michigan. If the American Ornithological Society goes through with its proposal to end eponyms, this warbler will get a new moniker.Many of us are aware of the American Ornithological Society's (AOS) decision to rename about 80 species of birds that are eponymously named (named for a person). These species are primarily found in the U.S. and Canada, at least as breeders. Apparently, that's just for starters - dozens of other eponymous names of birds elsewhere in the Americas are also on the chopping block. In total, about 150 species eventually will be involved in the purge of eponyms.
That's untrue, at least in regard to English names (which are the names slated for change. The AOS has no authority to change scientific names). The genesis of the official AOS's Checklist of North American Birds is the inaugural list, published in 1886. In the intervening 138 years, there has averaged less than one English name change a year. However, if one takes scientific names into account, there has been an utter blizzard of changes. Fortunately for birders, there is no real need to know scientific names, as we are fortunate to have a well-defined and stable system of English names. I would say only a vanishingly small number of birders knows or makes an effort to know scientific names, so all of the myriad changes to those wrought by taxonomic shifts and other legitimate reasons are largely behind the scenes for most people.
I looked at the New World Warblers (Family Parulidae, the largest family of songbirds in eastern NA) and compared name changes of the 38 species that breed in eastern North America (U.S. and Canada). One of them is extinct, the eponymously named Bachman's Warbler. The results are interesting. Thirty-three species still bear the same English name as was given in the 1st edition checklist in 1886. Yet a nearly equal number, 31, have a different scientific name today. So, 33 of the 38 warblers go by the same English name as they did 138 years ago, and 31 of the 38 warblers now go by different scientific names. I suspect an analysis of most sizeable families of birds would show similar results.
One huge asset that ornithology has that very few other disciplines - in botany and zoology - have is a stable system of English names. English bird names are the currency of the masses (in English-speaking places). They allow all of us to speak on the same page, and greatly facilitate learning by newcomers. While it's fun for me to be out with other botanists and spout names like Carex pedunculata, Liquidambar styraciflua, or Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, those aren't user-friendly words liable to promote general interest. I wish botany had a stable system of English names - it could only help lure others.
I think the AOS's plan, as defined - both the reasoning for it and the implementation thereof - needs a pause, a rethink, and a much broader base of input. Including people with differing opinions. Abruptly renaming dozens and dozens of bird species is fraught with problems too numerous to enumerate here, and any such plan should be thoroughly vetted and justified.
To read the AOS reasoning behind changing names, go here: http://tinyurl.com/ynhkyk7u
To see a petition against the name changes, with arguments against it, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2bjxf6uz Feel free to sign it, too.