Bird named after Confederate General is changed

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RobertP

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Glad they didn’t let that one slip through the cracks!


(CNN)The American Ornithological Society is the latest organization to shed a problematic name from the past.
“The organization has announced it is renaming the McCown's longspur, a little prairie bird native to the Southwest and northern Plains that originally was named after Confederate Gen. John Porter McCown. The bird will now be known as the thick-billed longspur.”

“How did a little bird get to be named after a Civil War figure in the first place? McCown was an amateur birder who kept regular records of birds he saw in his travels, so it's not surprising one of the new species he came across was named after him.”


 
Who has the kind of time to waste to look through an ornithological catalog to identify any birds named after someone with a Confederate background?
It was named after him because besides being a general he had been an avid birder........it's interesting context doesn't count when it was named after him because he was an avid birder......not because he was a Confederate general.......
 
Read the article carefully. The National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club will probably be changing their names shortly. (Will the madness never end?!?)
A link in the article says that 150 other names are being considered for changing because of the unsavory, in their opinion, character of the namesakes. I would say the Sierra Club is in a real pickle with John Muir, their founder and namesake of the beautiful Muir Woods in California has been found to have once hung out with several racists. They’ve already issued a contrite statement, good luck to them in making up for lost funding if forced by the mob to disassociate with Muir. Same for the Audubon Society. Get woke - go broke.
 
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It was named after him because besides being a general he had been an avid birder........it's interesting context doesn't count when it was named after him because he was an avid birder......not because he was a Confederate general.......
Well it also says he participated in the Seminole War, so there’s that.
 
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Obviously life has threw me a few curve balls in my dad died when I was 16, my brother at 30, mom two yrs ago.....have dealt with heart and cancer in last 8 years as well..........

It must be nice if your biggest issues in your life to be concerned over, is people who have been dead over a 100 years:thumbsdown:.....

Or who a bird is named after..........
 
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Obviously life has threw me a few curve balls in my dad died when I was 16, my brother at 30, mom two yrs ago.....have dealt with heart and cancer in last 8 years as well..........

It must be nice if your biggest issues in your life to be concerned over, is people who have been dead over a 100 years:thumbsdown:.....

Or who a bird is named after......
I just wonder how many birders-of-color knew who John Porter McCown was before the woke crowd ferreted him out. I mean the whole gist of the article is if it weren’t for the nasty names of Audubon, Muir, McCown, etc., the inner cities of America would be teeming with bird watchers instead of gangs.
 
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It's rather obvious I would think, if the intent was to honor the Confederacy........they would have picked a more indentifiable confederate.......... But as the article mentions he was an avid amateur birder and very well may had "discovered" the bird.........but again it appears that actual context means little to the current PC police
 
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It's rather obvious I would think, if the intent was to honor the Confederacy........they would have picked a more indentifiable confederate.......... But as the articile mentions he an avid amateur birder and very well may had "discovered" the bird.....
Yep. It’s not like the little bird’s name was Stonewall’s Longspur Yankee Killer.
 
This is getting to be like being in a Kafka novel.

First off, I bet there's not more than a handful of average citizens who could tell you who John McCown was or what the McCown longspur is. And who would actually be offended by the name of a bird (well I suppose that might happen should the bird be named something like the shuck-jivin black bird).

I will say I've often thought of more accurate names for the Sierra Club but I won't get into that; let's just say they probably won't choose one of my ideas.
 
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