As a Mainer, I am resistant to all change. With the approach of inauguration day, I embrace the current wave of anti-science. Science is messing with my worldview, and that is complicating my all-important life list.
Let’s start by blaming Carl von Linne, AKA Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist who developed a classification system in 1758. He divided animals into groups that had things in common. Then he divided them into smaller and smaller groups, based on their similarities. There were seven levels in all, with the lowest level being the species. We still use the system today.
My listing obsession started when Roger Tory Peterson included a checklist in his ground-breaking Field Guide to the Birds, the pocket guide that enticed me to become a birder when I was still in grammar school. The checklist was in the front of the book, conveying its apparent importance. Young boys would never bother with anything in the appendix. Peterson encouraged: “Keep a Life List. Check the birds you have seen.” So I did, and I’ve been doing it for 50 years.
If only that checklist were immutable. Once printed, it ought never to change. Once I check off a bird I’ve seen, it must never be questioned. Life ought to be predictable like that. This is a scorecard of my success. In a game of basketball, nobody pauses at halftime to reevaluate which goals should count.
Alas, science reevaluates everything. The American Ornithological Union takes the lead in this country to determine names and classifications of birds. This committee of scientists reviews proposals every year, accepting any change that garners 2/3 support. There were few changes this year, but the sky lark I added to my life list during a visit to Victoria, British Columbia on Sept. 7, 2004 has now been renamed the Eurasian skylark. That’s what the rest of the English-speaking world calls it. But we’re America. Was this change necessary?
Worse, the AOU approved three splits that could affect my life list. The Leach’s storm-petrel has been split into three species: Ainley’s, Leach’s, and Townsend’s. I’m certain the hundreds I’ve seen in Maine waters were all Leach’s, but what about that single bird I saw in the Farallon Islands near San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2005?
The western scrub-jay has been split into the California scrub-jay and Woodhouse’s scrub-jay. I was on the California coast when I added the western scrub-jay to my life list on Sept. 29, 2005, so it was probably the California type. Woodhouse’s apparently resides in Nevada, or so they tell me. I was happier when it was just one bird.
It could get worse. There’s talk about lumping common and hoary redpolls into one species. That would reduce my total. Plus, I had to work darned hard to put that hoary redpoll on my life list. Don’t tell me it’s just a different color morph.
There’s talk of splitting eastern meadowlarks into two species, fox sparrows and white-breasted nuthatches into four, and red crossbills into as many as ten!
It could get much worse. Three weeks ago, the American Museum of Natural History in New York announced research suggesting that the world has twice as many bird species as scientists currently think. They say we’ve been doing it all wrong. Our notion of what defines a species has largely been defined by which birds look similar and which birds can breed together.
In short, we’ve been deciding bird species based on their similarities, an approach scientists seldom use for classifying the rest of the animal kingdom. For land animals, they typically pay more attention to morphology, which examines the physical differences between similar critters. Supposedly, this is a better way to track evolutionary histories. If this approach were applied to birds, scientists would pay more heed to distinctions in plumage patterns and color, and less to which bird fornicates with which. There are currently about 10,400 species of birds in the world. The new approach would categorize birds into as many as 20,000 species.
All of this would erase the life list I have carved into stone over the last five decades. I’d have to start all over again from scratch. I’d have to travel the country and go birding everywhere and have lots of fun. There would be twice as many species, and my new life list would grow quickly. Even a walk in my driveway could add new species to my start-over list. Hmmm. Maybe I like science after all.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.