Did you ever wonder why the Greater White-fronted Goose is the first bird listed in field guides of the birds of North America? I did. I think about stuff like that. And this curiosity often sends me on wild goose chases that carry me far afield in my search for an answer that satisfies me. The White-fronted Goose was no exception. I eventually chased down the reason for this bird’s prominent position, but only after an intellectual odyssey that led me to Australian grunge music and biological philology.

My journey began with—what else—Google searches. From the first couple Google entries, I learned that in a typical field guide, “related birds” are first grouped together: the Sparrows, the Hawks, the Goatsuckers, the Boobies, the Chachalaca, to name a few (Who said field guides are boring?). Then these groups are placed “in order from least evolved to most highly evolved.”

I’d heard that explanation before. It suggests that scientists are able somehow to determine the evolutionary “ranking” of the various birds, and ornithologists just put the birds in that order in the field guides. It makes sense, I guess, if you don’t think about it too hard. But think hard with me, please. I’ll grant that for the sake of uniformity, it’s probably a good idea for field guides and the birders who use them to be in synch with scientific data. I have no problem with that. My problem is with what the data seem to be saying. If the various groups of birds are placed “in order from least evolved to most highly evolved,” then the bird on page 222 is more highly evolved than the bird on page 221. Take this to the extreme. The poor Greater White-fronted Goose listed on page 1 is so un-evolved compared to the American Goldfinch on page 579 that if it didn’t have feathers and lay eggs, we should wonder that it’s a bird at all. And by implication, are we to understand that the end-of-the-book finches somehow embody the epitome of birdness in their “highly evolved” bodies.

I realized I’ve got a problem with the expression “highly evolved.”

Which led me back to Google, where my odyssey got more interesting. I typed “highly evolved,” clicked on the Wikipedia entry right at the top of the list, and discovered Highly Evolved, by the Australian alternative rock band, The Vines. Great song. Great album. Hours later, I was no closer to understanding the meaning of highly evolved, but I did get caught up on a bunch of music from the early 2000s that I had missed on the first go-around. I even snuck in a listen to some old Mose Allison cuts that for some reason popped up on the sidebar.

Believe it or not, Highly Evolved by The Vines eventually pointed me in the right direction, once I remembered why I had Googled “highly evolved” in the first place. The song is referenced in a blog post likewise titled “Highly Evolved,” by an associate professor of Veterinary Microbiology at Iowa State University (pen name, Iddo). In this humorous post, Iddo rants at the erroneous and misleading use of the expressions “highly evolved” and “more evolved.” Those loaded expressions imply that highly evolved is somehow better than or superior to less evolved, as in “Einstein is more highly evolved than a sponge.” Einstein certainly has traits that we value, and that make him more interesting to us than a sponge (A sponge cannot grow a decent mustache, for example), and biologically he certainly is more complex (more cells, more organs, etc.). But to call him more highly evolved implies that evolution by natural selection is somehow imbued with a moral end game that culminates in the emergence of homo sapiens. I’m sorry to inform you, but evolution is not a goal oriented process.

It does my heart good to know that the whole purpose of the natural world was not to give rise to me. And the sole purpose of the Greater White-fronted Goose’s existence was not to lay the groundwork for the eventually more “highly evolved” American Goldfinch.

For the final word on how to think about the order of birds in a field guide (you do remember that’s what we’re doing here, right?), I finally went to where I should have started—the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Here’s how it is succinctly explained on the Lab’s website: “Generally speaking, the groups at the front of the list are thought to have split off earlier from the common ancestor of all birds, or what is called the ‘root’ of the bird tree of life.” The groups at the back of the field guide took longer to split off from the common ancestor. The many species of birds that emerged over time via natural selection are not qualitatively different from each other. They simply occupy different places in the time continuum. That’s it, pure and simple.

This is an answer I can live with. It makes sense even if I think hard about it.

Several nights ago, while still mulling over the contents of this essay, I returned home late from an errand. I stepped out of the car and was admiring the almost full moon when I was thrilled by the honking of a small flock of Greater White-fronted Geese flying low overhead. I couldn’t see them, but their high-pitched laugh-cackle was unmistakable. In the heart of this asphalt jungle, standing under a streetlight before a row of Chicago brownstones built a scant fourteen decades ago by immigrant brick-layers, I was swept up into the timeless wonder of this ancient bird’s annual journey from south to north. It’s an odyssey that has been reenacted each year for thousands of years—barely one step removed from the theropod dinosaur from which all birds descended. Compared to the epic drama being carried out in the sky above me, our city of big shoulders felt suddenly very small, very insignificant. And I felt very under-evolved.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.

Dan's Feathursday Feature: Greater White-fronted Goose