Oh boy, Danny
Danny:
"A bird," you write, parroting an oft-used ID line, "can adapt to a new environment and get a label as a new species of bird. But, it is still a bird."
This is my favorite type of argument: One which as its premise states something entirely untrue. Overlooking for the moment that 'species', 'genus', and 'family' are rather arbitrary classification points used to clarify what is essentially a continuum of fauna variants, let's continue:
If you take a look at the fossil and DNA patterns of - interestingly - birds, you find that at one time they were, in fact, dinosaurs. At some point, they changed quite a bit, stopped being dinosaurs, and were birds. I'm oversimplifying for expediency's sake, but that's the basic idea.
I'm consistently amazed by the ability of some people to wilfully ignore the forest for the trees. Suppose we reframe the argument in terms of color.
In effect, Danny, then, your argument is this: Red can change a little bit if you change its hue or brightness, but it could never change into Blue. Red and Blue are different colors - they can't change into each other!
Well, as anyone who's seen a gradient knows, this isn't true. There's something called purple in between, and it's the reason your argument is, satisfyingly, specious.