June 7, 2018

Wilson's Warbler

Wilson's Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Back in the day when this column appeared regularly on the Environmental Page of the Arizona Republic I recall losing multiple battles with my masters in the dark tower (channeling Clay Thompson here) about the proper way to present bird species’ names in print.  The common English language names of species should be written with capital letters.  Period.  End of discussion.  But no, that didn’t conform to the editors’ “style sheets,” and never mind that doing otherwise defied logic.

Mind you, capitalizing common birds’ names is not done to assuage the pretentiousness of birders with some arcane badge of legitimacy.  It’s to avoid confusion, and I’ve ranted about this a couple times in past “Bird Is a Verb” columns, once even sneaking it by my long ago editors at the Republic.  So, when I opened the Sunday, June 3 Republic and saw the article about Tice Supplee and the Western Rivers Bird Count, my proof reading antennae immediately went up.  Then because it’s always good journalism to pique interest in an article with a photo, it took only a few seconds to realize I had my next column.

But, let me slow down for a moment.  The newspaper article was well written and informative, and props to Tice, Arizona Audubon’s Director of Bird Conservation, for snagging almost two entire pages of newsprint to cast light on habitat and water conservation and the cause of Important Bird Areas, all subjects near and dear to the birding community.  And the article was even above the fold over what I thought was EJ Montini’s very best column ever!  Valley & State, Sunday, June 3.  If you missed these articles, you have to go find them.

Here’s what made me chuckle before I even read the birding column which carried the catchy, grabber title “A Different Kind of Tweeting.”  The accompanying photo, splashed all the way down below the fold and squeezing EJ, was a nice shot of a Wilson’s Warbler in habitat along the Agua Fria River.  Sure enough though, the photo caption read: “A yellow warbler, a species Audubon Arizona is tracking . . . “  Sometimes I guess luck trumps logic.  Wilson’s Warbler certainly IS yellow.  But it’s not a Yellow Warbler.  It’s always the colors in the common names that confuse the issue, and non-birders and many novices just don’t get it.

Though I certainly agree with the title of EJ’s article—“Schools-chief candidates are proof Darwin was wrong”—I would submit that newspaper editors responsible for fact checking and proof reading specialty columns also fit that category.  Funny too, that I remember another tenet of the “style sheets”—the second time you use a person’s name in a column you have to use the last name only, NEVER the first name only.  First thing I learned in school was that calling a friend by their last name meant they probably weren’t really a friend.  Editors would have called me on this in today’s column, but Tice IS a friend and it sure feels like EJ is one because his columns always lighten my day, letting me know I’m not the Lone Ranger.  And I think EJ’s a casual birder too.

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this rant and will get outside this week for the Western Rivers Bird Count, a chance to contribute to citizen science and ponder anew what we can do to respect the blue planet we call home.  Wilson’s Warblers have no doubt finished passing through on their spring migration northward, but Yellow Warblers are summer residents, and you might encounter a Yellow-breasted Chat.  It’s also a warbler and it’s yellow, so it’s a “yellow warbler” too.  But it’s not a Yellow Warbler.
Yellow-breasted Chat
Yellow-breasted Chat