How the Left Exploits Birds for Politics, Profit, and Pseudoscience

Whether it’s racist bird names, Native American land acknowledgments, or climate change, swooping into the world of birding can give you a big woke headache.

Pete Dunne of the New Jersey Audubon Society uses binoculars during the World Series of Birding, May 12, 2007, in an estuary in Cape May, N.J. Photo STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images

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The politics of the left, which includes fake science and institutionalized cultural wokeness, has infiltrated birding to such an extent that it’s enough to send even the most passionate birder fleeing from the woods.

Although I developed a love of birds at a young age, it wasn’t until the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns that I realized birding—and specifically bird photography—had become more of a serious passion to me than a lighthearted hobby.

So it was that I eventually found myself roaming Sapsucker Woods, a 226-acre wildlife sanctuary that surrounds the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Visitor Center. The sanctuary, lab, and internationally acclaimed Macaulay Library is a mecca for birders.

Upon entering the visitor center there, I was greeted with large dinosaur murals. That’s when I began to realize that making friends in the birding community wasn’t going to be easy. There were quite a few prerequisite beliefs I was going to have to embrace—or ignore—to get along, not the least of which were tiny, flying dinosaurs.

The Audubon Magazine sums it up this way: “The consensus is in: Birds are living dinosaurs. But how that epic evolutionary leap took place remains one of science’s greatest mysteries.”

Apparently, it’s only a consensus because the birding powers that be have all agreed to stick to the same unprovable story.

As you may have guessed, I’m one of those “Birds are not Dinosaurs” science deniers who believes that all the answers are in the Bible. As for birds, Genesis 1:20 tells us: “And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’” That means that birds were created on Day Five, and God created man and land animals on Day Six. I’ve always found it a beautiful thought and fitting tribute that birds existed before man, but it’s not a beautiful thought in the bird world.

And don’t think I’m ignorant of the theropods, velociraptors, and supposedly irrefutable evidence that our tiny, sweet-sounding, winged friends are nothing more than airborne, hellish Tyrannosaurus rexes leering down at us from the trees. If that’s not nightmare material, I don’t know what is.

If you’d rather just stay home and open a copy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s quarterly magazine, Living Bird, you’ll be force-fed more wokeism.

It begins on the masthead with the obligatory land acknowledgment of Cornell University being on the traditional homeland of the Cayuga Nation. They go on to acknowledge the “painful history” and “dispossession” of the native American land on which Cornell University sits. (And although it’s been observed that statements of this kind are “ultimately meaningless,” I’m not so dismissive. An addendum by Cornell’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program throws around some big words, such as “national genocide,” “stolen land,” and “restitution” for “theft.” One could assume these land acknowledgments are the beginning of court battles that could see a lot of land and money changing hands.)

The current issue of Living Bird then launches into the ornithology lab’s unbridled excitement at the recent decision by the American Ornithological Society (AOC) to change all those nasty bird names that represent people we’re now enlightened enough to hate.

The official statement on the AOS website sounds like something straight from a Monty Python sketch:

“In an effort to address past wrongs and engage far more people in the enjoyment, protection, and study of birds, [AOS] will change all English bird names currently named after people within its geographic jurisdiction.”

And this: “Some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today.” They add that they need a much more “inclusive” bird naming process because “everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely.”

This implies that somewhere in America, there are people who haven’t been allowed to study birds freely, which is, of course, absurd.

The first bird to fly into the crosshairs of the AOS was McCown’s Longspur, now renamed the Thick-billed Longspur. John P. McCowan, a naturalist, amateur ornithologist, and army officer stationed in Texas, was the first to discover the species. It was the custom of the time to name birds after the person who discovered the species. Of course, as 19th-century demographics would have it, discoverers were usually white men.

Ten years after the bird discovery, McCowan would be a major general commanding multiple armies in the Confederacy. And since new generations are being taught that every person in the confederacy was fighting to keep slavery, we need to eliminate McCowan from our history books.

Audubon Magazine reported it this way:

“Now, as American culture is embroiled in a reckoning with monuments to white supremacy—and when the birding world is itself confronting its own past and present racism—the McCown’s Longspur has become a central point of tension in a much larger debate about honorific bird names, colonialism, and racism.”

By November 2023, the AOS caved to pressure and decided to change all eponymous bird names (i.e., birds named after people).

Recently, however, there’s been a backlash, with opponents to that decision saying they’ve been ignored and even called racist. One birder was quoted as saying, “This is a very volatile situation with all the vitriol that is being thrown around by those that are pro-purge [those in favor of changing bird names].”

Once we get past that controversial bird-world dispute, we come to another progressive problem thrust beak-first into the birding community: the politics of climate change.

As I’ve learned the hard way, any time one gathers for a birding event, one can expect to be tirelessly lectured on the effects of climate change—the pseudo-science that’s done wonders to fill the coffers of nonprofits such as the National Audubon Society. InfluenceWatch reports that Audubon, with an annual reported revenue of $150 million, “tends to support left-of-center environmentalist policy goals, including increased efforts to combat climate change and restrictions on the natural gas industry.”

“Society personnel and family members primarily donate to Democratic candidates,” it continues.

A click on their website will likely show you a sickly-looking bird, a plea for money, and a statement reading:

“We’re in a race against time—to give birds a fighting chance in a changing world. Your support will help secure the future for birds at risk from climate change, habitat loss, and other threats.”

From the American Bird Conservancy to the U.S. Forest Service, climate change and its effect on birds is considered settled science—just like the flying dinosaurs.

Whether it’s dinosaur evolution, racist bird names, Native American land acknowledgments, or climate change, swooping into the world of birding can give you a big woke headache. It’s sad that the most innocent among us are always the first to be exploited, even when it’s just the delicate, feathered creature splashing obliviously in the bird bath.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.