Obsolete Bird Names

Have you ever heard of a greenlet, a sooty buzzard, or a scolopaceous courlan? These are all names that were once in use. In 1988, the US Fish and Wildlife Service published a booklet with many obsolete or regional common names, to aid bird researchers who might come across these names in old museum specimens or historic accounts.

It is available at the USDA Wildlife Services Digital Collections page
https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/2336
and also here on Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Obsolete_english_names_of_North_American_birds_and_their_modern_equivalents.-_DPLA-_e23dfedc5b83787bb7a42b9ba80f492c.pdf.

I made up a little quiz matching the old names to our current names here
https://littlewildstreak.com/2016/11/13/quiz-obsolete-bird-names/
and the answers are here
https://littlewildstreak.com/2016/11/14/bird-quiz-answers/

And the answers above -- a greenlet is what we call a vireo, a sooty buzzard is now called a Short-tailed Hawk, and a scolpaceous courlan is a Limpkin.

Posted on May 9, 2022 02:56 PM by textileranger textileranger

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