[Tweeters] Western Flycatcher, yay!

[Gary Bletsch]

Dear Tweeters,
That is interesting to hear about the impending lump of the "Cordilleran" and "Pacific-slope" Flycatchers. A birding friend and I were just talking the other day about clumsy names cluttering the list of bird species. Whenever we revisit this topic, we always agree that the naming committees should include a poet, a Latin scholar, and a biologist. Each of them should have veto power.
I cannot think of any other taxonomic split resulting in two such cack-handed coinages. The word Cordilleran doesn't even sound English. They could have used "Mountain Flycatcher," which was and is available. The name Pacific-slope is hard to say, and we already had far too many hyphenated clunkers back when the split was made; now we have even more. At least these monikers are headed for the nomenclatural boneyard where they belong.
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch

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