Capitalization of Bird Names
I had a disagreement with my editor over the capitalization of bird names. I felt they should be capitalized to eliminate confusion. For example, there are blue jays and Blue Jays. This is also the position taken by the ABA in their most recent styleguide: "Capitalize the standard English species names of birds but not the common names for groups of birds." The ABA also says that, when using hyphenated names (Eastern Screech-owl) the word after the hypen should not be capitalzied.This is the tack I took in my book, "Birds of Central Park." Other authors take the opposite tack, mainly I suspect because editors don't like all those capitals on a page--they think it makes the page more difficult to read. Marie Winn, in her book "Red-Tails in Love" went in the other direction, using lower case on all bird names, as did Richard Rhodes in his biography of John James Audubon.
The National Audubon Society believes bird names should be capitalized but they add a new twist--they want you to capitalize the second word in a compound word.
This from the Audubon Web site:
Close scrutiny of birds shows that there are large and small differences between them. Scientists have arranged all living things, including birds, in a system that indicates how they are related and the order in which they evolved. There are hierarchies of resemblances and differences. One of the liveliest aspects of ornithology is the ongoing research that tries to ferret out the true relationships of groups of birds and whether certain forms should be considered distinct species or only subspecies. The system we use today to name all plants and animals was developed by a Swedish naturalist named Carolus Linnaeus over 200 years ago. He realized that common or colloquial names were unreliable for purposes of permanent classification. Even today the word "robin" indicates one bird to an Englishman and a different species to an American.
Common names often cause confusion. That is why, back in 1758, Linnaeus gave each bird a name made up of two words, usually derived from Latin or Greek. The first word is the name of the genus, or group of closely related species, and the second word is the particular species. The genus and species are combined to form the scientific name. Each creature in the animal world has a unique scientific name shared by no other. That is why, in the list posted on the Audubon Web site, we included all of the bird's scientific names. Whenever in doubt check the scientific name.
The English name of each of our birds is also given in the list. There are rules governing the capitalization and hyphenation of birds' names. No one who just knows birds casually is expected to either remember or figure out unaided how birds' names are correctly written in English. Therefore, you can always get them right by consulting the list.
It might be helpful to go over a few of the general rules of written bird names. When writing your own name you always capitalize your first and last names, e.g., Sam Spade or Lucy Brown. When writing the English name of a bird species, you should always capitalize its first and last names, e.g., Scarlet Tanager or Winter Wren. This avoids confusion with other modifiers in the sentence. For example, "the secretive, tiny, Black Rail..." If you are referring to unspecified birds use lower case letters, e.g., "those herons over there," or "that sparrow on the ground." If a species has a three-word unhyphenated name, all three words are capitalized. For example, "the graceful American White Pelican..." Many birds have compound or hyphenated "first" or "middle" names. Only the first letter of the compound name is capitalized: Red-throated Loon, or Long-billed Curlew. However, if a bird has a compound "last" name, then both parts of the compound name are capitalized: Eastern Screech-Owl or American Golden-Plover.
To assure accuracy we will be updating the posted list whenever the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) Checklist Committee issues supplements announcing recent name changes. The Web address is: http://www.audubon.org/bird/na-bird.html.
