Atlántico Norte

To enjoy the observation of birds, it is not necessary to know their names. However, if you want to learn more about birds, it quickly becomes fundamental to call a bird by its name. And yet, this is sometimes not as easy as it might seem. For those of us who use English field guides to birds, or work with international tourists, using the English bird names may be easiest. Or, if we are biologists, then maybe scientific names could be the most useful names for us. But for many of us, using the common name in our native language would feel most natural to us. After all, when Swedish birders go birding, they call the birds by their Swedish names. When Dutch birders go birding, they call the birds by their Dutch names. When U.S. or Australian birders go birding, they use English bird names.

In Latin America, this is more complicated. Most countries are Spanish speaking, yet there is a remarkable variety of Spanish names for birds, often very different names in different countries for the same species. Take Coragyps atratus. We all know how to identify this species, but what do we call it? In some countries, this bird is known as a Zopilote Cabeza Negra. Other countries call it Zopilote Común, or Zopilote Negro, but some countries don’t use the word zopilote at all—they know this bird by the name gallinazo. Other countries use the word cuervo. But wait a minute—isn’t a cuervo a Corvus corax? Yes: in Spain that is a Corvus corax. But in Paraguay and Uruguay, cuervos are Coragyps atratus. Sometimes the same name is used for different species in different Spanish-speaking countries. This makes it difficult to standardize names. And that is why birding communities are best served with a set of names used in their own countries.

Using a set of common names for the birds in your own country makes birding more attractive, more inclusive, and less elitist, than having to use foreign names, or even scientific names. After all, when you go birding, you want to focus on the birds, and not necessarily on language. For someone who struggles with English, long names like Double-striped Thick-knee can be difficult to pronounce, for a bird that you’ve known all your life as Alcaraván.

As a service to the Honduran birding community, the Aves Honduras Science Committee recently updated the common names for the birds of Honduras. For many common species, the names reflect how these birds are known to Hondurans, even to people who would not consider themselves ornithologists, biologists, or birders. For less common species, the names reflect how they are used in field guides to the birds of Honduras, or how they are used elsewhere in the region. These names can now be accessed through all Cornell bird products, from eBird and Merlin to Birds of the World. This option—Spanish for Honduras—joins other options already available in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology products, such as Spanish for Mexico, Spanish for Costa Rica, Spanish for Panama, etc. You can find it in your account preferences, where you can set the names used for your Cornell Lab of Ornithology account.