Classifying Birds: An Introduction to Taxonomy

Why is an American Robin a thrush, and not a robin? Why are ducks at the front of the field guide, and blackbirds at the back? And why do they keep changing the names of birds?!

Find the answers to these questions, and questions you didn’t even know you had, in our new class on bird taxonomy. Designed for beginners, this introduction will make a complicated topic something you can understand, and use in your everyday understanding of birds. 

We will work to explain the systems used to classify birds, how and why these classifications change over time, what we can learn about how birds are related to each other by their classification, and how this classification of birds helps us understand birds better.