The Originals: Reading the First Descriptions of North American Birds
Thanks to the magic of the internet, the original descriptions of most of the world’s birds — long buried in the stacks of far-flung libraries — are now at our fingertips. Some are just as dusty and dry as you might expect, but many provide answers to questions we might not even have thought to ask. Join me for a tour of the fascinating, often surprising stories hidden in the first descriptions of some of our most familiar birds.
And yes, I considered an entire evening of just Linnaean footnotes.This one is among my all-time favorites:
The genus Strix differs from the genus Falco in the same way a moth differs from a butterfly: the one is diurnal, the other nocturnal.
