> On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, Don Baccus wrote:
> > I write for the oregonian on natural history (very) occasionally,
> > as well as other places, and I can never decide how to
> > present bird names: capitalized or not.
[snip]

On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, M. Smith responded:
>
> I think the rules for this are quite clear. Follow the format in any
> published checklist, which are based on AOU. Names that are not preceded
> by a hyphen are capitalized in bird names.
[snip]

My $.02:

The rules are clear if you are writing for a North American ornithological
society. As Mike and others point out, the AOU has decreed that bird
names are to be capitalized. He also points out that the birds are the
*only* group for which this is true. It's mule deer, lodgepole pine,
yellow-winged stonefly, but (according to the AOU), Northern Saw-whet
Owl. The AOU rules are more or less a historical accident, and before you
accept and apply their rules uncritically in non-technical writing, think to
yourself: has the AOU been so faultless in its other nomenclatural duties
that we should accept their opinion about capitalization automatically? ;-)

In all scientific publications except for ornithological ones, bird names
are not capitalized. In Ecology, it's dark-eyed junco. in Animal
Behavior, it's dark-eyed junco. in the Journal of Comparative
Endocrinology it's dark-eyed junco. In almost all popular writing, animal
names of all sorts are uncapitalized (perhaps I should say "in all
closely edited popular writing"). So if you try to apply
the AOU rules outside of ornithological publications, you risk appearing
provincial to the world at large. In newspapers, lower-case for
everything is the way to go. Except for proper names, e.g. Wilson's
warbler. As to the ABA opinion that bird species names are proper names,
that's just silly. If you believe that every species is a proper name,
then you have to get used to Dog, Cat, and Horse popping up in the middle
of a sentence.


Chris Hill
Seattle, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu