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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nutcracker" data-source="post: 3602386" data-attributes="member: 18214">Three problems with that:First, it gives rise to 'upper class' superior birds and 'lower class' inferior birds and problems with indexing (think of computer sorting A-Z then a-z) - it looks awful in lists. Consistent capitalisation looks neat.Second, it means you have to find out the etymology of a bird's name before you can know how to spell it properly. Are you really sure turkey vulture is right? Actually, under CMS rules it should properly be Turkey vulture: the species is named after the gamebird, but the gamebird is itself named after the country, which is capitalised as a place name. And what is the etymology of Phainopepla? I don't have the faintest clue! Should it be capitalised or not? Was Phainopepla a famous Native American chieftain whose memory would be scandalised if decapitalised? Or is it a place name? Or just an ordinary word?Third, a lot of bird names can be confusing when lower case, but are unambiguous when capitalised. This statement is clear when species names are capitalised, but becomes very odd when not:</blockquote>