Here's my thoughts on bird names.
a) on stints--Red-necked Stint to make it more consistent with usage
from where it is regular.
b) on scrub jays--No matter what, no hyphens between Scrub and Jay. Of
the four choices, I'd favor "B"--Florida Jay, Scrub Jay, and Santa Cruz
Island Jay.
I can't think of a viable alternative for western and don't
believe California works with sufficient coverage as there are distinct
subspecies to the east of this state. I thought long about an attached
note from Peter Rauch on the use of Florida Scrub Jay as the name, but I
don't like western, and the alternatives which I have thought
of--Cordilleran, common, and frontier (feeling a bit Turnerian)--don;t
work either. Given this, I'm sticking to two words.
Also, leaving something just "scrub jay" will help eliminate confusion with newer
birders. Having just been on a field trip where I had to try to explain
the relationship of the Pacific-slope flycatcher based upon all the
guides which only had western listed. I think it's helpful to people
just getting into the area to keep a commonly used name like scrub jay
for the main body of birds and to use geogrpahical attachments, where
aprropriate, to describe the split. Thus Florida and Santa Cruz Island
would be the best desciptive words to put in front of jay here. I feel
the island must be included for clarification, by the way, just as island
is used in the names of many birds of Oceania.
Again thank you for the opportunity to comment.
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Ray Korpi
rkorpi at clark.edu
wrk: 360-992-2215
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