Coping with the New Taxonomy, & How It Messed Up My Alphabet. (Long and probably not worth reading).

[Joe Roller]

Fellow birders,

Although I started birding as a kid, earlyish in the last century, and was a busy birder

in the 60's and 70's, I was out in the field much less during the 80's, when nesting overwhelmed me, soon

followed by first and second cycle year off-spring, etc. So when I found time for birding again, in the 1990's, 

I realized that I needed to educate myself about the dreaded "T" word--Taxonomy! 

"Do Woodpeckers come before or after Flycatchers?" I'd ask myself. 

If your own answer is "Who cares?" it's OK to stop reading now.

I started hopped on the early part of the learning curve by studying "Non-passerines" vs "Passerines."

What a "false dichotomy!" After all, why is not the taxonomy of sporting equipment divided into "baseball bats" and "everything that is not a baseball bat?"

But, I digress.

 

As a memory crutch, I devised an alphabet of Colorado's bird families, from loons through finches, reflecting the now out-moded taxonomy of that era:

A was for loons, cormorants, and pelicans

B was for herons and egrets

C was for Ducks and Geese, 

D was for Hawks

and so on, in taxonomic order, one letter for each group.

In my own alphabetic system, I "lumped" swifts and hummers, so I would not run out of letters of the alphabet.

Fortuitously, 

G was for Gulls

P was for pipits and Phainopepla-- how nice!

Q was for vireos and warblers

S was conveniently for Sparrows,

and this alphabet ended with 

U for icterids, then

V for finches.  (For a while I had X for House Sparrows, but gave that up, trying to keep it simple).

I coped with some minor family rearrangements, as the vireos moved away from warblers

and herons and falcons were bumped around.

As an exercise, I looked at the latest (but surely not final) taxonomic arrangement of birds, and here is how my old alphabet 

went bezonkers:

C now comes first, for Ducks and Geese, followed by

E for gallinaceous birds, etc, etc.

The newest taxonomy, using my old alphabet is now:

C

E

A

H 

I

E

F

G

A

B

D

H

I

J

D (again)

K

G

M

L

N

O

P

X

P (take a breath)

V

S

R

Q

S

T

R

U!

So there you have it, what I now call the "A C B's" of modern avian taxonomy.

Finally, so I won't be misunderstood as a taxonomic Luddite, I admire progress in avian taxonomy, feeling that advances like DNA analysis, sound recordings, etc, etc are bringing us closer and closer to "reality,"

with a better understanding of what the birds have known all along.

Joe Roller, Denver

Find me in the phone book under the "R's".  

OOPS! Are there phone books anymore?