Sussex records of Wilson's Phalarope from Birds of Sussex(Paul James).
1971: An adult female at Arlington Reservoir on 25 September, at the Cuckmere Haven oxbows on 26-27 September and then on the long pool' near the northwest corner of Pagham Harbour from 28 September to 6 October Birds 65: plates 50b, 78a and 78b) when it was mindlessly shot.
1978: An adult along the eastern side of Pagham Harbour on 21 October 1979: An adult at Sidlesham Ferry on 26-27 August.
1984: An adult female at Ternery Pool, Rye Harbour on 30 June and 1st July
An adult at Sidlesham Ferry on 12 October.
1985: A first-winter at Ternery Pool, Rye Harbour on 9 October
1987: A juvenile moulting into first-winter plumage at Sidlesham Ferry from 18-
26 September (Brit. Birds 81: plate 19).
1991: An adult male at Sidlesham Ferry on 3 June
The presence of a Wilson's Phalarope in Hampshire got me reminiscing about previous encounters with this species; an unrecorded but probably single figure count in Canada, 250+ in Texas and five in the UK - or was it four?? My own notes from the past are pretty 'thin' at best and it took some input from JAN via SDOS to track down the last bird above (my fifth). This was seen after a day's outing to Hanningfield Reservoir for a Bridled Tern which, needless to say, had departed. I'm guessing a stop at a roadside phone box and a call to Birdline SE prompted the return to Sidlesham. Until now I didn't realise this was a one-day wonder. Sadly, last month's Pennington bird would have been the first since the Cley bird seven years ago and a Hampshire tick but the drive and particularly the walk from the car park was beyond me.
It also prompted thoughts about birds names with the BLM/BAME/George Floyd effect providing further ammunition in the US for removal of honorifics. I'm not sure if they (the AOS/ABA) intend to rename all birds named after 'colonial' explorers and naturalists or to only focus on those with some history of involvement with the confederacy, slavery, oppression of Native Americans or if every 'baby' is going to be thrown out with 'the bath water'. Personally, I've always found it fascinating to find out who these people were and read about it in various books by Richard and Barbara Mearns (Biographies for Birdwatchers being the first), Bo Beolens (Eponym Dictionary of Birds), Stephen Moss (Mrs Moreau's Warbler) etc. Much is now available via Wikipedia allowing for erroneous info.
But back to Alexander Wilson who went from a weaver and part time poet in Scotland (- how much money was there in poetry 200 years ago??-) to The Father of American Ornithology encouraged by another naturalist William Bartram (who had Bartram's Sandpiper named after him - many years ago being renamed to the less-than-accurate Upland Sandpiper, the 100 or so that I've seen being on land barely above sea-level and the first of which was on a freeway divider strip outside Houston!! No mountains there). So, if the Americans have there way what will happen to AW's phalarope, storm-petrel, plover, snipe and warbler??
So far the first casualty is McCown (rightly or wrongly and no political slant here from me) whose longspur seems to have been renamed Thick-billed. Will West and East Palaearctic honorifics also be subject to scrutiny? Will we lose Pallas, Bewick, Radde, Baer, Przevalski and so on or will their human rights credentials prove to have been 'on point' by 21st century standards??
