Something that hardened bird watchers have become used to is variations in English names. At the present time, some of these have become quite confusing. The
main point is that there is no ‘correct’ English name, only names that are preferred by a particular organization or publisher. As an example consider the small bittern being reported in Canberra at the moment. A few years ago this was just a ‘Little Bittern’
a species shared with the northern hemisphere. In 2008 this was recognized as a separate species, so an English name was needed. ‘Australian Little Bittern’ was chosen. This was a bit of a mouthful, so ‘Little Bittern’ was good enough if you were just talking
about it to your friends.
Now along comes eBird. The managers of that website tried to be helpful by offering ‘Australian’ versions of names if you wanted to select that option. This
included ‘Australian Little Bittern’. However, for the same species a new English name was chosen for international (non-Australian) eBird users because it was less likely to cause confusion with the northern hemisphere ‘Little Bittern’. The new name was
‘Black-backed Bittern’. A complication is that eBird provides a ‘rarities’ service for users, and this does not adjust the name for the different versions of English names, so even in Australia ‘Black-backed Bittern’ is the notified rarity. Nonetheless,
the photos, videos etc that accompany eBird reports are labelled ‘Australian Little Bittern’ by Cornell Lab (manager of eBird).
Admittedly, ‘Black-backed Bittern is a little easier to say, so it might eventually prevail over the longer alternative as a formal name. Just to enter for a
moment the Forbidden Forest of bird name opinions, it might be added that ‘Black-backed’ was poorly chosen: (a) the black back belongs to the male which is less seen compared to females and young (see eBird photos - not many black backs there); (b) the black
back is shared with the male of the ‘original’ Little Bittern, (see photos). Experts who argued for separation of the species only mentioned, relevantly, that the Australian species had ‘chestnut on neck and shoulder’.
A little table is attached to indicate some current differences in names.
