THERE IS SOMETHING REMARKABLE ABOUT LOOKING for birds at last light. When pandemic lockdowns began, I took daily walks around a placid lagoon in a park in downtown Santa Cruz, California. The verdant reeds and towering silver-barked trees glowed in the hours just before sunset. I didn’t know what these plants were called, but I carefully and meticulously learned the names of all the birds I saw and heard.
Songbirds and waterfowl seemed at home in a world awash in gold and I felt more attuned to their rhythms when we basked together in the last sliver of summer sunlight. If I was lucky, a little bird would appear among the thickets long enough for me to count its field marks—nimble flight, yellow-green feathers, a perfect black oval on its crown. A Wilson’s Warbler! I’d gleefully add this songbird to my checklist after the tiny floof flitted away into the brush.
I didn’t give much thought to its name. Whoever Wilson was had no bearing on my understanding of my new feathered familiar, except that maybe the “O” in its name felt like a nod to its dark cap. Flipping through my field guide, I saw four more birds bore the same possessive title. So the honorific became a passive marker for speaking of Wilson’s birds, but not for knowing them. As for other birds carrying people’s names, I’d misconstrued several to better suit my knowledge of the species. I’d spent years believing Steller’s Jay was called “Stellar Jay” because its plumage looked like the night sky. I’d assumed Cooper’s Hawks might steal chickens from coops at night.
I began to think more deeply about the names appended to the natural world as the pandemic wore on. Confined to my home, I logged eBird checklists of my backyard visitors while scrolling through my social media feeds, which were filled with scenes from racial-justice protests. Soon a video circulated of a say when we speak of birds?
