#first of all i want the Gambel's quail to be renamed the Arizona quail

[mister-writes]

Wait, why is there bird name drama about it??

The issue is covered pretty nicely in this article here, but as a basic summary:

A lot of birds have people's names attached to them (Franklin's gull, as an example). Some of the people the birds were named after are Not Great (racists, eugenicists, etc.). Plus, having People Names doesn't really tell you anything about the bird or what it does, unlike names like Yellow-headed blackbird or Prairie warbler, which tell you what the bird looks like or where it lives right off the bat.

Because of that (particularly the Racist Bird Name bit), there's been a recent push to rename some of the more egregious examples. But then you get into the tricky area of deciding who is Good enough to have a bird named after them and who isn't, which wouldn't be a good situation for anyone involved.

So instead, the American Ornithological Society, which is in charge of the official names of all American birds, has decided that they're going to rename every single bird that's named after any person. That's over a hundred birds in North America. This has irritated a big facet of the birding community, particularly older birders who don't want to learn any new bird names and/or think that the decision is too "woke" (so much so that someone on my local bird page went on a multi-post rant about boobies and bushtits and other "inappropriate" bird names that were staying the same).

I for one think it's a good idea, I think it will be pretty cool, and I'm excited to see what they name things! I kind of hope they have some kind of voting or submission period but I don't think they will haha.