Barn Swallows

As on Tuesday, I saw for the first time this spring, a Swallow, I was preparing to make a posting about this. However as I had discovered, some of my readers of based in the good old USA, they have confuse matters by giving the same birds or species are completely different names. This applies if to the Swallow or air as the Americans call it the Barn Swallow. While this is the the same species, Hirundo rustica, it does mean that I have to be careful to ensure that I don't confuse any of my loyal readers even though is is only two cats and a human. Further, I have discovered that some in the US just don't understand simple words like Jumper.

However while thinking about what I needed to say and what I wanted to say, I was thinking about the way that there is a degree of speciation between the two populations. This speciation occurs when two populations are isolated. It was this the trait that Charles Darwin discovered on his trip in the Beagle and led to the discovery of evolution, the origin of species.

Any way, I was just looking to see what else was going on in news, when I discovered this article on human population. it appears as though a the human population really became two species before we left Africa.

In this case of the barn swallows they are the differences between the two populations in the US and in Europe, where the US population are a different shade and have longer streamers. However they are still both the same species.

They are that instances of where the Americans have given birds they complete the different name even when we have an existing name for the species. This is where the Latin name for a species become so important. In the dim and distant past even in the UK there were many different names for the same plant for instance. This is in no way a dig at the Americans for renaming our plants birds or animals, you do that well enough yourselves by electing a Bush to be your president and simultaneously disproving evolutionary theory.

There are some occasions when the American name is more appropriate, take the example of the loon, to us in Europe the bird will always been known as the great northern diver but any observation of its behaviour will show just how appropriate the American Names is.

Anyway it was great to see the first swallow of Spring arrive, no matter what its non de plume is.

The Article on human populations