{"id":5644,"date":"2013-07-28T03:51:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-28T10:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=5644"},"modified":"2020-05-23T19:45:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T23:45:18","slug":"ladies-first-nope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/28\/ladies-first-nope\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladies First? Nope."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Bendire's Thrasher Sulphur Springs Vallley 2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/5340955562\/in\/photolist-KLCWZ9-rqcCS9-98XN1J-98Uz5r-98XMYo-9FJey2-9FJiLt-9FJiic-9FJgJr-9FJhtk-9FJi8B-9FJhCF-9FJiVz-9FMeW5-9FMdBw-9FJemZ-9FJiAZ-9FMcW7-9FJfQe-58kt7Y\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/5206\/5340955562_6d3f8fcd0f_w.jpg\" alt=\"Bendire's Thrasher Sulphur Springs Vallley 2\" width=\"400\" height=\"338\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>On this date in 1872, Charles Bendire took the first skin of the long-tailed desert bird that has been known ever since as the&nbsp;<strong>Bendire thrasher<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Bendire sent the bird &#8212; a female, preserved by &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/347\/mode\/1up\">mummification with carbolic acid<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; to Elliott Coues, who, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/346\/mode\/1up\">not having then specially studied these birds<\/a>,&#8221; submitted it to Robert Ridgway, who pronounced the specimen a&nbsp;<strong>Palmer curve-billed thrasher<\/strong>. Bendire<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>replied at once that the bird was an entirely distinct species, laying a very different egg [before shooting the adult, Bendire had collected <a href=\"http:\/\/collections.mnh.si.edu\/search\/birds\/\">at least six egg sets of the species<\/a> in June 1872], and having somewhat dissimilar habits; and he finally settled the case by sending [Coues] a male skin, precisely like the original female specimen, together with several of both sexes of &#8230; Palmeri, all alike different from the new bird.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Coues doesn&#8217;t quite say &#8220;I told you so,&#8221; but poor Ridgway doesn&#8217;t come out looking any too good in this story. The Smithsonian ornithologist&#8217;s misidentification, Coues writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>puzzled me &#8230; but presuming, of course, that he knew his own species better than I did, I felt obliged to rest on what he told me, though I was dissatisfied, and in &#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/49581#page\/377\/mode\/1up\">the Key<\/a>, with the specimen before me, refrained from alluding to this (supposed) female of &#8230; Palmeri&#8230;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ridgway having missed his chance, it was left to Coues to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/347\/mode\/1up\">name the new species<\/a>, a task he, no doubt gleefully, performed in the pages of <em>The American Naturalist&nbsp;<\/em>in&nbsp;June 1873, calling it <em>Harporhynchus Bendirei<\/em>, the <strong>Bendire&#8217;s Mocking-Thrush<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/346\/mode\/1up\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5645\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Screen-Shot-2013-06-26-at-1.58.47-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-06-26 at 1.58.47 PM\" width=\"356\" height=\"153\" srcset=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Screen-Shot-2013-06-26-at-1.58.47-PM.png 356w, http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Screen-Shot-2013-06-26-at-1.58.47-PM-300x128.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 356px) 100vw, 356px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/collections.mnh.si.edu\/search\/birds\/\">The skins Bendire sent Coues<\/a> are now in the US National Museum&#8217;s collection, where they lie on their backs with red labels identifying them as the co-types of their species.<\/p>\n<p>Coues treated the two specimens slightly, and tellingly, differently. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/347\/mode\/1up\">His formal description<\/a> is based entirely on the male skin, with just a note at the end that the female is &#8220;not distinguishable from the male.&#8221; And in incorporating the skins into his private collection, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/127615#page\/348\/mode\/1up\">he catalogued the male first<\/a>, before the female, which had been shot more than three months earlier. It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/secure.pdcnet.org\/enviroethics\/content\/enviroethics_1998_0020_0001_0023_0039\">an old story and often told<\/a>, ornithology&#8217;s consistent treatment of the male bird as the unmarked category, but rarely do we come across such a glaring example as this one.<br \/>\n<a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/5700450377\/in\/photolist-KLCWZ9-rqcCS9-98XN1J-98Uz5r-98XMYo-9FJey2-9FJiLt-9FJiic-9FJgJr-9FJhtk-9FJi8B-9FJhCF-9FJiVz-9FMeW5-9FMdBw-9FJemZ-9FJiAZ-9FMcW7-9FJfQe-58kt7Y\/\" title=\"bendires thrasher Whitewater Draw August 23 2007 086\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/2203\/5700450377_676232f7fb_w.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" alt=\"bendires thrasher Whitewater Draw August 23 2007 086\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em>Male? Female? Yes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this date in 1872, Charles Bendire took the first skin of the long-tailed desert bird that has been known ever since as the&nbsp;Bendire thrasher. Bendire sent the bird &#8212; a female, preserved by &#8220;mummification with carbolic acid&#8221; &#8212; to Elliott Coues, who, &#8220;not having then specially studied these birds,&#8221; submitted it to Robert Ridgway, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/28\/ladies-first-nope\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ladies First? Nope.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,36,38,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5644"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11776,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions\/11776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}