When the bird is familiar but the name is not.

Birds Through an Opera-Glass belongs to the early period of standardized North American bird names. Bailey refers readers to the American Ornithologists’ Union Check-List, but she also uses regional names, descriptive nicknames, and titles inherited from earlier naturalists.

A modern reader should not replace every historical name in the prose. The old name is part of the book’s language and sometimes part of Bailey’s joke. A note or cross-reference can provide the modern orientation while leaving the original voice visible.

A short historical-to-modern crosswalk

• Wilson’s thrush / tawny thrush → Veery. Bailey’s chapter groups these names together. Today the Veery is Catharus fuscescens, recognizable by its warm coloring and descending, resonant song.
• Yellow-hammer → Northern Flicker. Bailey uses a regional name for the eastern yellow-shafted form of this ground-feeding woodpecker. “Yellowhammer” can mean a different bird in Europe, so location matters.
• Chewink → Eastern Towhee. The older name imitates the bird’s scratchy call. Cornell still describes “chewink” as a characteristic sound of the Eastern Towhee.
• Golden-crowned thrush → Ovenbird. Despite the older English name, this streaked forest bird belongs with the wood-warblers rather than the true thrushes.
• Crow-blackbird → grackle. Bailey’s broad grouping predates the common-name conventions modern guides use for grackles.
• Indigo-bird → Indigo Bunting. The shorter historical name points to the same brilliant blue finch now familiar under the standardized common name.
• Chipping bird / chippy → Chipping Sparrow. Bailey’s informal names often preserve exactly the sound or behavior that helped beginners remember a species.

One bird can carry several names

Bailey’s chapter “Bobolink; Reed-Bird; Rice-Bird” demonstrates how geography and season shape vernacular naming. The same species may be called bobolink in northern breeding meadows and reedbird or ricebird farther south during migration. A list that treats the three names as three species would miss Bailey’s point.

Classification can move beneath a familiar description

A common name may remain stable while scientific placement changes, or a once-broad species may be split. The Eastern and Spotted Towhees, for example, were once combined as the Rufous-sided Towhee. Modern taxonomy reflects new evidence; Bailey’s behavioral description records what an attentive observer saw in her own place and time.

What does not need updating

The core of Bailey’s method remains current: compare size, color, movement, voice, habitat, and season. A bird is not only a label. The patient act of assembling multiple field marks is exactly what protects readers from the confusion a changed name can create.