This time of year, as we wait (this time a little longer than usual) for the now-annual Supplement to the AOU Check-list, I always recall the jocular complaint published in The Oologist more than 90 years ago: We birders, wrote that long-ago correspondent,
have to stand by and see Oberholser stick his knife through all our historical and time-tried nomenclature and cannot do a thing about it.
The reference, of course, is to Harry C. Oberholser’s long series of “Notes on North American Birds,” published in the Auk beginning in 1917 and ultimately preparing the way for the third edition of the Check-list, which finally appeared in 1931.
But who was the author of the complaint? He signed himself thus:
Your best friend, Pedioecetes.
If you know, fill me in. Otherwise I might have to figure it out myself.
