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Re: Is there a consensus on capitalization?



There are two competing consensuses on English names of North American 
birds. :-)  To eliminate confusion about what's part of the name and 
what is merely a description, one group treats them all as proper nouns 
and follows the American Ornithologists' Union list exactly in spelling 
and capitalization -- see the list at 
http://pica.wru.umt.edu/AOU/birdlist.html
This group includes most birding and ornithological publications.

The other group capitalizes only parts of English names that are 
indisputable proper nouns, for example Townsend's warbler.  So when 
this group mentions a sighting of a flock of black-headed gulls at the 
coast, there may be no telling whether they're talking about Black-
headed Gulls (Larus ridibundus) or Laughing Gulls (Larus atricilla).  
This group includes most newspapers and bird watcher's digest.  

P.S. Last time I was at the beach, I saw a big flock of black-headed 
gulls.  They were very common. :-)

> Here's a question that has been nagging me for some time.  What is the accepted
> method of writing the name of a bird, with capitalization or without?
> (i.e should it be Blackburnian Warbler or blackburnian warbler?)  I've seen both
> in usage, I tend to lean toward the first but don't know if it is correct or
> not.
> Certainly birds named using a proper noun would always be capitalized (i.e. Cape
> May warbler (or Warbler) and MacGillivray's Warbler).
> I think I've figured out that hyphenated names (like Red-eyed Vireo as opposed
> to Red-Eyed Vireo) would only have the word preceding the hyphen capitalized,
> but could be wrong here as well.

-- 
Charles W. "Will" Cook                  w 919-660-7423
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook            cwcook@duke.edu
Box 90340, Biology Dept., Duke Univ., Durham, NC 27708