Young, Gifted, and Wild About Birds – Bird Names for Birds, with Jordan Rutter and Gabriel Foley

Tuesday, March 16, 7 p.m. via Zoom
Is it acceptable to honor a person who believed of Black men that “his intellect … is greatly inferior to that of the Caucasian, and that he is, therefore, as far as our experience goes, incapable of self-government”?

What if that same person also owned slaves? Meet the Rev. John Bachman of South Carolina.

Like many others with similarly histories, he is honored eponymously in the form of two songbirds, Bachman’s Sparrow and Bachman’s Warbler.

For Jordan Rutter and Gabriel Foley, the founders of the Bird Names for Birds initiative, the answer is clear: No, it is not acceptable.

Bird Names for Birds is an initiative to change honorific English common bird names; since its inception last summer, McCown’s Longspur—named after a Confederate officer—has been changed to Thick-billed Longspur. Jordan and Gabriel will talk about Bird Names for Birds, why it’s important, and what the future holds for it.