Nothin’ could be finer…

A quick turn through any north American field guide will make bird naming trends pretty clear. Most birds are named after descriptive terms that identify the bird in some way, even if that field mark is not one that a regular field birder would immediately come up with. Anyone who’s has to explain to a non-birder that no, they likely did not see a Red-headed Woodpecker but rather a Red-bellied Woodpecker and yes, I know there’s red on the head and not the belly, but that’s just the name it has, knows exactly what I’m talking about.

After descriptors, the most popular designations birds get saddled with tend to be place names which, frankly, can be as misleading as the field marks, because these common names are often based on where the first specimen was taken. In this way you get Philadelphia Vireos far from Philly and Connecticut Warblers hard to find in Hartford. But perhaps the best represented state, well, technically states, is my home state of Carolina.

Birders in the east are all too familiar with the plucky Carolina Wren and equally energetic Carolina Chickadee, and birders a hundred years ago would have had some experience with the now long-gone Carolina Parakeet. That’s not all. If we include scientific names suddenly we’re inundated with Carolina birds from the Chuck-will’s-widow, Caprimulgus carolinensis, to the Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis, and including along the way Rusty Blackbird, Red-bellied Woodpecker, White-breasted Nuthatch, and even the secretive Sora.

But it doesn’t even stop there. If we remove our birdy blinders suddenly we notice the Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, the Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad, Gastrophryne carolinensis, the Short-tailed Shrew, the Green Anole, grassworts and swallowtailed butterfiles and on and on and on. An entire zoo made up only of Tar Heel taxa. The thing is that these species, while common (even if historically so in the case of the Parakeet) they’re hardly endemic to Carolina alone. The birds range far and wide across the east of the continent, the squirrel across the country, the herps all along the southeast. The vast majority of these species were named by Linneaus himself. So why is Carolina the site du jour and not Georgia or Florida or Alabama?

It turns out there’s a pretty good reason for it. Linneaus had friends, and one of them was an English naturalist and artist by the name of Mark Catesby, who in the early 1700s was traveling across the southeast collecting species and sending them overseas to the taxonomy tycoon himself. Eventually Catesby published his findings and his illustrations in his two volume magnum opus The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: Containing the Figure of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects, and Plants… over a period of twelve years from 1731 to 1743. In the meantime, Linneaus was naming many of his new species after the place his friend was traveling, and thus carolinensis entered the scientific lexicon.

The birds and others that still bear the name are the last of what was a name glut Linneaus cataloged for Catesby. Nearly all original carolinensii, with the exception of the list above, have changed names over the past 350 years, Mourning Dove, Dark-eyed Junco, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and American Robin among them. And in fact, Catesby the artist was passed over in the public consciousness by more famous nature illustrators Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon, whose work, it must be said, looks awfully derivative in light of Catesby’s nearly 100 years prior.

As for Catesby’s own name and legacy? Even though his artistic contribution was overshadowed by later artists and his scientific contribution was hidden behind his travel destination, Linneaus made sure his name would live on, in an unmistakable addition to any summer night across the continent Catesby was so taken by. In the deep grating song of a Bullfrog, appropriately Rana catesbeiana.

Source : Plate of Mark Catesby (1731-1743)
Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands
Subject : Squirrel and Cormus
Photo from wikipedia