At two meetings in June 1772 of the Royal Society in London, Johann Reinhold Forster described the specimens of birds, fishes, and mammals that Hudson’s Bay Company naturalists had collected and sent to England on their summer 1771 trade ships (Houston et al. 2003). Among them were five birds new to science. Andrew Graham, the factor at Severn River, provided most of these, including a specimen and accompanying notes that enabled Forster (1772) to describe a “fine non-descript [i.e., undescribed] owl,” which he named the Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa. The other four were the birds we now know as the Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis), Boreal Chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus), Blackpoll Warbler (Dendroica striata), and White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys).