Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). Ulster County, New York, USA.

Scientific nomenclature may be a difficult concept for the novice naturalist to grasp. Common names are often much easier for casual use, but these can be easily confused or misconstrued - an American robin and a European robin are very different birds and not closely-related at all. When we use binomial scientific names, we passively offer of a wealth of information (some assembly required). The Genus comes first and is always capitalized: this is incredibly useful to know when drawing conclusions or finding similarities between one species and another. The species name is always in lowercase, and ultimately differentiates that organism from any others.

Let's take this bald eagle. The bald eagle’s scientific name Haliaeetus leucocephalus translates from Latin as follows: Hali (sea), aeetos (eagle), leukos (white), and cephalos (head). So is this useful information that tells us much more than what we have already observed? Probably not so much for this popular, high-profile bird, but for lesser-studied species it can be very useful to know what similarities they likely share with closely-related congeners: habitat, behaviors, seasonality, and more. The genus Haliaeetus is a very old lineage of modern birds and contains 10 extant species of sea eagle. Even going one step above genus to learn the family will offer a naturalist a lot of information. In this case, the bald eagle is placed in the Accipitridae, which contains many types of raptors.

Of course, it is a lot of work to learn and retain Latin definitions. Luckily, complete or parts of species names are often reused for completely different groups. For a fun activity, look up species that contain canadensis (associated with Canada) in their Latin name. Spoiler: there's a lot.

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