Bird Taxonomy and Bird Lists

As part of my ecologist visit at Ostrander Elementary we did a bird survey. I explained to the students how ornithologist might take field notes. I learned long time ago of a four letter coding system for the common names of birds listed in the American Ornithological Union (AOU). In researching the use of field notes for ornithologist I've found that several scientists have proposed a six letter coding system (go to http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bbowman/birds/sixlettercode.html). Both systems use the first letters of the common names of birds. In the four letter system that I am familiar with, birds that have a single word name the abreviation for that bird would be the first four letters of its name. For birds with two names, the first two letter of the first name are combined with the first two letters of the last name to come up with the four letter abreviation. In the case of birds with three names, which includes hyphenated names, the first letter of each of the first two names are used with the first two letters of the last name. For birds with four names, the first letter of each name is used for the abreviated name. There are some cases with the four letter system where there are two birds with the same abreviation (i.e. Barn Owl and Barred Owl). This is where the six letter system would work better.

Here are the abreviations for the birds that we identified on our bird walks at Ostrander.

Red-tailed Hawk - RTHA
Ring-Billed Gull - RBGU
Rock Pigeon - ROPI
Mourning Dove - MODO
Northern Flicker - NOFL
Red-bellied Woodpecker - RBWO
Downy Woodpecker - DOWO
Blue Jay - BLJA
American Crow - AMCR
Fish Crow - FICR
Black-capped Chickadee - BCCH
Tufted Titmouse - TUTI
White-breasted Nuthatch - WBNU
Brown Creeper - BRCR
Northern Mockingbird - NOMO
American Robin - AMRO
European Starling - EUST
House Sparrow - HOSP
Red-winged Blackbird - RWBL
Common Grackle - COGR
Northern Cardinal - NOCA
Song Sparrow -SOSP


I have arranged the list above in what scientist call taxonomic order. This is the order in which birds are classified to show the close relationships between them. For example ducks and geese are very similar types of birds and are classified as Anseriformes. Gulls, although they are found near water and even swim on the surface like ducks are more like shorebirds, so they are classified as Charadriiformes. Most of the birds we observed around the school are called perching birds, which scientist would call Passeriformes. Although the red-tailed hawk perches in tree branches its body, wings and beak shape and its behaviors are not like that of the Passeriforms. These characteristics of the red-tailed hawk are shared by all hawks, falcons and eagles. These birds are called Falconiformes. Just to confuse you, owls, although they might look and act a lot like hawks are not included with the Falconiforms. Can you think why? The owls belong in the group Strigiformes.

There were 22 species of birds observed on my bird walks with 3rd graders over the three week period of my ecology visit. As spring time progresses and the migrant birds return there might be more than twice an many species that would be found around Ostrander Elementary. These might include: Turkey Vulture, Black Vulture, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, Wild Turkey, Killdeer, Eastern Screech-owl, Chimney Swift, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Hairy Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Phoebe, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Barn Swallow, House Wren, Carolina Wren, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Eastern Bluebird, Cedar Waxwing, Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Baltimore Oriole, Brown-headed Cowbird, Rose-breasted Grossbeak, Purple Finch, House Finch, American Goldfinch, and Chipping Sparrow. Some ornithologists keep a list of the birds that they see in a particular area. You could use this list to create a checklist and record the bird species observed over the course of the school year.