My Personal Ornithology
By J. Drew Lanham, Safina Center Fellow
Photo: Redbird (or, northern cardinal). ©Jen Goellnitz
Musing. Recent thoughts on what’s what and why it doesn’t have to always be. I have been in love with birds and a bird lover for most of my life. Names are important as they help us tell one thing from the next. My name is Drew. What’s yours? Easy enough. Birds aren’t so simple. Or rather, we’ve complicated things that could be simpler. Take my grandmother Mamatha’s redbirds. They become northern cardinals and Cardinalis cardinalis as I learned more about “proper” scientific nomenclature. But some days, even with lots of degrees attached to my name that make me an “authority”, they are redbirds again. And so on and so on with yellow-billed cuckoos back to “rain crows”. Great-horned owls back to “cat owls”. Northern flickers (yellow-shafted race) back to “yellowhammers” and juncos back to “snowbirds”. I know well what and who these birds are, but being a bit contrarian in latter middle age (but not quite Medieval), I take the liberty of being occasionally prickly.
Photo: Cat owl (or, great-horned owl) ©Amber Dawn
Now in breaking news not so new. As we consider redacting the names of racists from birds ( and lesser beasts), it’s important to reorganize my own perspective, perhaps organize my own taxonomy. Does it really matter? Yes. Birds are flesh feather and bone monuments of life, hope and higher aspiration to me. So it does matter. After all, no one names things after Nazis or serial killers (wait ...see “indigenous genocide”...we somehow let that slide multiple times). But I’m just one Black bird loving ornithologist so what can I do? This is what. I’m taking the lark by the horns and forming my own committee of one. Here it is. Henceforth (and since about seven years ago), I no longer refer to Bachman’s sparrow by the racists’ name tacked to it by some other racist buddy (named Johnny Audubon) and validated by homogenized committee. No. It is now back to a better melodiously appropriate name in my book; “pine woods sparrow”. It fits the habitat and character of the little longleaf pine loving songster. Likewise, the likely extinct southern warbler with the “B” name on its front end will be typed by habitat instead of hate. It will be in my personal feel guide (not “field” but “feel”, because emotions are involved here), “swamp cane warbler”, because guess what? That’s what it loved to skulk around in before we drove it out of existence. So those are just a couple of the naming things currently in question I wanted to help the “experts” with some super simple ones. You’re welcome. I won’t even ask for an honorific ’cause that’s what got us into trouble in the first place and my closeted skeletons advised against it.
Then there’s more personal affectation to naming or listing. The question is often, “What’s your favorite bird?” My response for a very long time has been “The one with feathers!” As everyone has a bird story, whether it be the peregrine plunging wild from the sky; the pigeon desperately fleeing from it leaving shat on your freshly washed car, or the chicken you disassembled at dinner last night, birds deserve more than the disappearing by billions we give them and the objectified listing that reduces them to good enough to go out and see or not. So here is my fave list. Selected birds of the moment annotated by why. It is a reflection of my thought process from bird watcher to birder to ornithologist to bird watcher to bird worshipper. This evolution recycles itself regularly. At least daily and sometimes by the hour. It’s a fickle feather syndrome.
Photo: White-crowned sparrow. ©Kelly Colgan Azar
The Recent Reorganized Taxonomy of My Obsessions
White -Crowned Sparrow — Envying the brown ignored thing — all sparrows and nonwhite human beings. I actually wrote a book about it.
Loggerhead Shrike — Stuck on a raptorial passerine. It’s a behavioral code switcher — like me .
Bobolink —Black birds are my birds. I said that before but let me tell you why. History lesson. Ricebird ancestors shared the terror and toil in Lowcountry rice fields with enslaved Black people. They were persecuted for eating the rice that made the planter class rich AF so they could enslave even more Black people and grow more rice. See the cycle? And some try to say there’s no connecting conservation and culture.
Prairie warbler — My Phoenix warbler — first bird identified on lost family land singing in a regenerating clear cut , their preferred early-seral stage habitat. I changed my major from the drudgery of mechanical engineering to zoology after that re-ignition of passion from that prairie. Folks who like well-designed mechanical things like jet engines and safe cars should thank that little yellow bird for saving them from me. Passion is key in successfully doing anything well.
Wood thrush — Love for a Song. Self-harmonizing from a dim lit wood elicits a sensual response. It’s my Love bird. I write lots of thrush poems. Does thrush rhyme with lust?
Peregrine Falcon — J.A. Bakers Bird. Read his masterpiece and fall in a literary head -spinning stoop to know what ornithological obsession beautifully written looks like. Plus they’re just badass.
Northern Bobwhite — Bird of my Boyhood. I knew where every covey hid, but even then when they rose from underfoot, my heart stoppered my throat. They are symbols of racial disparity in southern uplands conservation. Black people being blamed for quail declines in an early 1900’s. SC Audubon report will get the conversation started. I can get deeper if you have few minutes, or 150 years.
Swallow-tailed Kite — The impossibility of flight defined in black and white. See? Those two hues CAN work together to accomplish extraordinary things. Ebony and ivory in flighted harmony.
Carolina Parakeet — Gone Bird forever in my mind but living wild in my heart. Wondering what they witnessed on the southern landscape. They say parrots are smart enough to recognize suffering and misery. Wonder what they thought of genocide and enslavement?
Rose-breasted Grosbeak — Flock Immunity. The “Blood Bibs” (thanks for the nickname Coreen Evans Weilminster) were the birds that rescued me from pandemic and racial injustice derived depression in the early days of COVID-19 and continually murderous cops. I sat in my backyard during spring migration and obsessed over them. They distracted me momentarily from the running toll of viral deaths and the murder of unarmed Black people in the streets They are the most parrot-esque grosbeak.
Scarlet Tanager — Any bird so brilliantly colored that has also been in the company of harpy eagles and jaguars , but then finds a way to my backyard mulberry tree, is worthy of worship. They are red birds too — but redder.
Whimbrel — One of Peter’s “wind birds” and Eskimo curlew cousin. Seeing them means wildness on the wing and the hope yet remaining in things with feathers. Not so long ago I saw tens of thousands of them when before I’d seen at most a dozen. I thought of how Peter M’s jaw might have dropped at the sight of thousands of whimbrel flying across the face of a blood-red rising moon. Would love to read the words he’d write. And yes, I got to see that and I’m still shaking .
Ivory-billed Woodpecker — the “rediscovery” a few years ago is where I made a hard left turn to not just deliver all the bad news of a broken ecology, but to write and speak towards possibilities of recovery and redemption we need to work to discover. It’s helped me work towards fixing “The Ecology” brother Marvin Gaye sang about on one of the best albums ever. And yes, while “I breathe, I hope”.(Thanks for the slogan to my home state of South Carolina)
Tundra Swan — ACE Basin to Eastern Shore to Arctic. Same bird that Harriet Tubman could’ve seen during her time on the Maryland Eastern Shore and down in the South Carolina Lowcountry. She freed people under the wings of free birds. That is heroic to me.
Harpy Eagle — Ornithologically-induced humility. To tremble in wonder (and fear) in the presence of a bird powerful enough to take not so small primates in feet the size of NFL lineman’s fists with talons like daggers, and carry you to a nest 150 feet up in a tree to be ripped head from limb to feed other little harpies. Ancient Mayan and howler monkey mothers must have shared the same terrifying concerns for their babies. That’s freakish and worthy of wild god status.
Photo: Harpy eagle. ©Jonathan Wilkins
There you have it, for now. Fifteen fave birds, and why. This list is subject to change and that right soon. Stay tuned.
Drew
J. DREW LANHAM