Subject: [Tweeters] RE: A plea for the correct use of the word "Merlin"
Date: Mar 17 14:43:12 2011
From: Kevin Purcell - kevinpurcell at pobox.com


On Mar 17, 2011, at 12:05 PM, Wilson Cady wrote:

> My pet peeve with bird names is not the pronunciation but rather the capitalization. Why do newspaper editors and even the USF&WS refuse to capitalize the second part of a bird's common name? Why is it Sandhill crane instead of Sandhill Crane, isn't it a proper name? Don't they know that every blue jay is not a Blue Jay?

That's technically a style issue (and different newspapers, websites and books follow different style rules) but I'm with you on capitalization of species names even though it's not done in the technical literature (perhaps because they don't care some much because the bionomial name will be in italics and properly capitalized).

I just about finishing Robert Michael Pyle's book about a butterfly big year "Mariposa Road" in which he decide not to capitalize species names. And I've been caught out by a few species names when reading this book with alongside a couple of guides. Of course an expert butterflier would recognize the names. On the upside I now have a much better feel for butterfly names and taxonomy.

Even worse is butterfly common names are even less standardized than bird names. Of course, I'm a neophyte lepper(?) but it made me appreciate the standard common names that the AOU and BTO (amongst others) even if they aren't consistent.
--
Kevin Purcell (Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA)
kevinpurcell at pobox.com
http://kevinpurcell.posterous.com
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