Tag Archives: bird name changes

For the Birds: House wren becomes northern house wren

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Photo by Chris Bosak
A house wren perches on a branch in New England.

My brother and I were on our favorite birding trail in my old hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, when one of those fantastic bird flurries happened.

It was mid-May and the flurry consisted of four or five types of warblers, two brown thrashers, a blue-gray gnatcatcher, Baltimore orioles, a house wren and a few other species. When the flurry died down and I entered the species into my eBird report, I noticed something that struck me as odd.

When I entered house wren, the only option that came up was northern house wren. What the heck is that? I thought. I assumed that was the species I’ve always known as house wren, but I still wondered where the “northern” came from.

A quick internet search confirmed that the new official name for the house wren species that occurs in the U.S. is northern house wren. The southern house wren, formerly considered the same species as the northern, lives south of the U.S. and there are also five separate Caribbean endemic species. The split and name changes happened in 2024. Somehow, I missed the memo until now.

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For the Birds: Falling behind on name changes

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Photo by Chris Bosak A common gallinule in Naples, Florida, April 2019.

Here’s the latest For the Birds column:

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I brought up the subject of bird name changes last week. The column was about eastern towhees and how the ones we see here in the East were formerly called rufous-sided towhees.

I recently visited family in Florida and came across another interesting bird name change. Coincidently, it relates to a bird that paid a rare visit to Keene last week.

We were walking on a trail south of Naples and seeing many of the birds typically spotted in Florida. One of the more ubiquitous birds was the common moorhen. We kept hearing a rather strange bird, call so I took out my phone, launched my birding app and typed in “common moorhen” so I could find out what the bird sounded like.

Nothing came up. How could that be, I wondered. I know there is a bird called the common moorhen. I saw many of them the last time I was in Florida.

Phone service was spotty on the trail, so I couldn’t do an Internet search for common moorhen at the time. When we got back on the road I discovered why I couldn’t find common moorhen. The bird no longer exists as the common moorhen. The American Ornithologists’ Union split the U.S. bird from the similar marsh bird that is found in Europe and Asia.

The bird found overseas is called the Eurasian moorhen and the U.S. bird is now called the common gallinule. Florida has always had the purple gallinule; now Continue reading →