[Bristol-Birds] The Trouble With Sibley
- From: "Jennifer B. Connors" <jenbconnors@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>, Bristol-birds <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:40:38 -0800 (PST)
Hi all,
First, I apologize if the following material is not appropriate for this forum,
and I promise not to the clog the system with silliness. When I share this with
non-birders, I get blank stares and hear crickets chirping. (If you're not
familiar with The Onion, it's a satirical newspaper. Whoever wrote this knows
why birders would find it amusing.)
I hope this makes you chuckle the next time you're looking at a Junco!
Jen C.
*******
Commentary
The Sibley Guide to BirdsHas Clearly Misidentified The
Dark-Eyed Junco
By Elaine Wynne
April 11, 2007
| ISSUE 43•15
I don't understand
it. How could it have happened a third time? They've had two opportunities to
correct it. But there it is, once again. The
Sibley Guide To Birds, third printing, page 488: "The dark-eyed junco,
a familiar visitor to wintertime bird feeders throughout much of North America,
is a species of the junco genus of American finches."
Mr. Sibley, once
again, the dark-eyed junco is not a finch. It's a sparrow. A sparrow.
And I was just
beginning to put that second printing behind me. But now the scab's been ripped
off, and the wound is as fresh as it was seven years ago, when The Sibley Guide
first came out. Oh,
you'll still see me and my spotting scope at Dunwiddie Marsh Saturday morning,
but at this point I doubt even sighting a Kirtland's warbler would lift my
spirits.
Apparently the 42
letters I sent Mr. Sibley, his publisher, and his literary agent either went
unread or now line the nests of Carolina wrens. I'm not sure what the man's
afraid of, especially since I larded these letters with all kinds of
reassurances like "it's a common mistake" and "I get all those
seed eaters mixed up, too" and other things I didn't really mean.
I've suffered many a
sleepless night pondering how such a blatant error came to pass. And when I can
sleep, I am tormented by fever dreams of dark-eyed juncos mating with house
finches and spawning horrible sparrow-finch abominations. Are Mr. Sibley's
nights filled with such drear phantasmagoria, too? Or, in some odd karmic
stroke, have I somehow been called to shoulder his burden of conscience because
he shrugged it off?
I was hoping The Sibley Guide would be different. I
spent years enduring one Roger Tory Peterson hack job after another, tolerating
it because I had no alternative. (Golden Field Guides? Please.) Perhaps this
David Sibley would have a fresh, keen perspective on ornithology. But no, he's
just another oriole-milking money-grubber.
People like Sibley,
I'm convinced, thrive on ignorance. He knows most people couldn't care less
about birds, and he's already been promised his big fat advance from the
publisher, so what's the difference if some tiny stupid bird is misidentified?
So a junco stays a finch.
I'm as flexible about
taxonomic classifications as the next naturalist. If ornithologists now want to
classify buntings as cardinals, sure, okay. It's not what I would necessarily
do, but I can accept it. There is a small core of reason within me. But that's
my curse, you see. I can't just roll with the punches like the other birders.
Which leads me to
another worry. It's plain that Mr. Sibley is a supreme incompetent; but could
it also be that the ornithology establishment and birding public don't share my
concern either? If they did, the outcry would be enough to inspire a revision.
But so far, and to the best of my knowledge, there's been complete silence on
the matter. Is there some kind of mass collusion going on here? Or is this
Sibley's scheme to make his work more accessible—to make it just as factually
deprived as its readers? The world is insane.
The National Audubon
Society is still gamely endorsing The
Sibley Guide, which, to be honest, is no surprise. Those
self-congratulatory amateurs are too busy direct-mailing birdie address
stickers to anonymous citizens to conduct responsible birding. Those people
would accept juncos as finches—hook, line, and sinker. What lightweights.
They're almost as bad as the Wild Birds Unlimited people.
Eh, why fight it. A
junco is now a finch. Why the hell not? While we're at it, let's call a flicker
a type of jay. Harriers? Just lump them in with the hawks. The next edition of
The Sibley Guide should refer to
robin's-egg orange and say that owl pellets can be identified by their jelly
centers.
Bastards.
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