Robert Francis

To be a bobwhite in a potato field hootin with my bobwhite wife

Yeah dude an entire body of scholarship, check the references if you're interested in reading.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishi...

Americans saw extinction as an inevitable consequence of progress, connected to native peoples' removal. "The passenger pigeon - the very image of exultant wildness - will soon be a rarity," having "departed w/ the disappearance of savagery in the land. " - Harper's Weekly, 1889

One candidate for best folk name is the Red-bellied Woodpecker, which apparently went by Chad

schnip schnap, they're eating my peas

Incredible story from Alexander Wilson, America's first ornithologist, in 1812.

Having names for plants and animals is our starting point for interacting with nature. I think that's discouraging for a lot of people because they don't know the names for things around them (me included!) but instead why don't we just… make them up?

🙏🙏🙏

Another excellent piece here, this is the best bird writing in the biz right now

Chunk Ducks, Blatherskites, Butterballs, and Slug-toots These used to be folk names for American birds. Where did they all go?

Americans used to know birds by thousands of unique local folk names. Ruddy Ducks alone were called dummy duck, dinky, dipper, dopper, dumb-bird, and god-damn. My latest piece is on the joy of folk names and losing them to the bureaucratic formalization of knowledge about birds.

If you're my enemy, this is how I'm regarding you

While "odd duck" and "silly goose" both began their rise to prominence in the 1990s, it seems like "odd duck" is of truly recent origin, while "silly goose" has enjoyed the periodic resurgence in popularity, most recently in the 1870s.

Great piece, legendary documentary.

One of the Funniest Documentaries of the Year Is Streaming for Free on YouTube Listers is a journey into the dark and cringy heart of one of the world’s most peculiar hobbies.

I wrote about the Reiser brothers and their hilarious, disgusting Listers documentary for Slate:

slate.com/culture/2025...

Guano miners on Laysan Island, 1891.

Bird specimens track 135 years of atmospheric black carbon and environmental policy | PNAS Atmospheric black carbon has long been recognized as a public health and environmental concern. More recently, black carbon has been identified as ...

The Pittsburgh/sooty bird one, of course, is real:

Bird specimens track 135 years of atmospheric black carbon and environmental policy | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

No way! That's such good research design. Incredible!

Some abysmal bird jokes from 1908

The Excitement Of Touching The Eccentric Woodcock On The Back

In other words,

I'd say so, I picked up my lifer Manx Shearwater!

My favorite side quest is eating foods at the place the food is named for. So far I've eaten:
-buffalo wings in Buffalo, NY
-key lime pie in the Florida keys
-Nashville hot chicken in Nashville

What else (in the US) am I missing?

As a niche bird history account I gotta share that there was a run on pet canaries after 9/11 because people thought they'd help protect against poison gas, one pet store owner said "I don't want to seem unpatriotic or anything but canary business has been great ever since 9/11"

Worth it if so!

I spend every day writing about birds and our messy relationship with em so if you crave more bird content you know what to do
birdhistory.substack.com

Only fair that I allow a binocular inspection?

This isn't how birding is supposed to work!

My 4 y.o. niece's favorite game is saying she wants to hear a bird that sounds "very scary" or "like a howl" or "funny" and then I have to find a bird that meets her demanding requirements on the Merlin app

Townhouses and telephone wires are non-native too, it's fun to think of cities as novel ecosystems. And thanks for reading!

can anyone confirm if this is true?

I came across this table during my research, fascinating that they can hit pretty high numbers but can't sustain them