Last year I wrote about finding a house wren and not being able to find it on the eBird list only to discover that the name of the bird had been officially changed to northern house wren.

Well, this year, there were two more similar name changes. First, the yellow warbler is now the northern yellow warbler. I think most people will continue to call it yellow warbler for years to come, but the familiar, loquacious yellow bird that nests throughout New England is, indeed, now the northern yellow warbler. 

The reason for the change is to differentiate the migratory yellow warbler (the one we see in New England in spring and summer) from the non-migratory yellow warbler that is a year-round resident of the Caribbean, parts of Central and South America, and extreme southern Texas and Florida. That bird is now called the mangrove yellow warbler.

It seems to me they could have just added mangrove to the non-migratory bird’s name and left the more common yellow warbler’s name alone. But they did what they did, and we all have to get used to it.

By the way, “they” refers to the American Ornithological Society and other ornithologists and taxonomists. The name change has little to no impact on the casual birder. It has some significance for those who study birds for a living and those who keep fastidious life lists.

I discovered the other name change by accident. By now, most people are familiar with birding app Merlin. That’s the one that can, among many other things, identify nearby birds by their songs or calls. The “home page” of the app has a feature that randomly selects a local bird as your Bird of the Day. When you use the app and that bird is heard, it puts a little “Your Bird of the Day” message next to the entry.

Always one to welcome a new challenge, however inconsequential, I began a quest to find my Bird of the Day whenever I took a birdwalk. I don’t exactly knock myself out looking for the bird, but I get a small measure of satisfaction whenever the Bird of the Day message shows up on my list. 

One day in mid-May, warbling vireo came up as my Bird of the Day. This will be easy, I thought. By mid-May, warbling vireos are seemingly everywhere and easy to spot and even easier to hear. Sure enough, shortly into my walk that day, I heard a warbling vireo. I glanced down at the phone to discover there wasn’t a Bird of the Day message next to the warbling vireo that showed up on the list. 

I was confused for a few moments before realizing that Merlin identified the bird as an eastern warbler vireo, not simply warbling vireo even though “warbling vireo” was indeed my Bird of the Day. Apparently, they updated the name on the species-heard list but not as a Bird of the Day. If finding the Bird of the Day was a lucrative pursuit, I would have protested about getting cheated out of my bird that day. But it’s not, so I hardly gave it another thought — until now, that is.

So, yes, the bird New Englanders have been calling warbling vireo for so long is suddenly the eastern warbling vireo. Similar to the house wren and yellow warbler, the name change resulted from a split of a bird that formerly was considered the same species. The eastern warbling vireo breeds in the eastern and central parts of the U.S., while the western warbling vireo breeds out west. There is very little crossover range for the species. 

In the grand scheme of things, not much has changed. People will continue to call the northern house wren a house wren, the northern yellow warbler a yellow warbler and an eastern warbling vireo a warbling vireo. But, in case you ever come across a birder in the woods who is a stickler for names, now you know the new official names.