Birds to drop their human names

Birds in North America will no longer be named after people, the American Ornithological Society announced.

Next year, the organization will begin to rename around 80 species found in the US and Canada.

"There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today," the organization's president, Colleen Handel said.

"Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely." Birds that will be renamed include those currently called Wilson's warbler and Wilson's snipe, both named after the 19th century naturalist Alexander Wilson.

Audubon's shearwater, a seabird named for John James Audubon, also will get a new name.

In 2020, the organization renamed a bird once referring to a Confederate army general, John P McCown, as the thick-billed longspur.