Best Of MetaFilter

Audubon's Oriole | National Butterfly Center | Mission | TX | by Bettina Arrigoni (cc by)

Names like "Satanic nightjar" still gets a pass under the new system, though, yes? Because otherwise I would like a word... — Nerd of the North. From gingerbeer, Big news from the world of birding: The American Ornithological Society announces that it will start changing the names of birds named after humans.

Inaccessible Island Rail (Atlantisia rogersi) by brian.gratwicke (cc by)

There's a reason why chapters of the "Feminist Bird Club" are popping up all over the world and it's part of a larger issue with outdoor recreation, spaces, jobs, and natural/environmental sciences in general that has spawned groups like Latino Outdoors, Outdoor Afro, Unlikely Hikers, and many others: Primalux discusses birding while Latina, poor, queer, and a woman in the Chris Cooper video birdwatch post.

Text TK talks about "my father, Douglas S. Rogers, who lived on Ascension Island from 1966 to 1971, working for Pan-American Airways' Aerospace division ... In his spare time he co-founded the island's historical society, took a ton of amazing photographs with his Hasselblad 500C, and aided visiting scientists" in the How do you get to Inaccessible Island? thread about world’s smallest flightless bird.

My first season, my class had been taught to how handle bees without gloves or even necessarily bee suits, just smokers. Non-africanized bees are gentle enough that they will rarely sting you if you know what you're doing ... Until autumn. Then they switch from "gather the bounty" mode to "protect the spoils at all costs" mode. Which our teacher deliberately did not tell us, because he wanted us to observe it for ourselves. By getting stung: showbiz_liz talks about the "domesticity" of bees in the I Want To Beelieve heart honeycomb thread.

Also recently: birds taking public transit; The Secret Society of Self-Stingers; Why Birds Do What They Do; 'Murder hornets'; "a vicious resource war is being fought between the avians and the rodents"; "Ferris Jabr critiques bird nests and the personalities that build them"; GPS-tracking the movements of eagles; Bird Tableau.