Diana Wells - 100 Birds and How They Got Their Names

and How They Got Their Names

DIANA WELLS

Illustrated by
Lauren Jarrett

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

For C. A. W.,
brilliant example of mate selection,
and all our children

I needed, and received, a great deal of help with this book. Especially appreciated were the professional skills and unflagging enthusiasm of Peter Kupersmith, Janet Klaessig, Charlie Colombo and the rest of the staff at the Joseph Krauskopf Memorial Library, Delaware Valley College, Pennsylvania. I thank my brother, David Greig (loved all my life, but lover of birds long before me) for his help. Also David Steward for his contagious fondness for birds. Eric Salzman gave me valuable ornithological advice, and my copy editor Bonnie Thompson rescued me from many a blunder. Henrietta Leyser raids the Bodleian library on demand, Claire Wilson keeps me alert with her uncompromising grammatical integrity, Inea Bushnaq guides me in Arabic language and culture, and Leslie Hartnett took time to read the manuscript. My brother, Andrew Greig, advised me on Australia. I thank Amy Gash for her affectionate encouragement and firm but tender editing. I thank Elisabeth Scharlatt and all the Algonquin staff for their trust, and Betsy Amster for being my excellent agent. I thank Peg Stevens for making it seem possible (when it didnt). And I thank John and Bar Purser and Geraldine Lloyd for the walk on which they showed me the dipper.

In the most inhospitable places on earth we find birds: sailors tossing on the lonely, stormy seas see ocean birds following their ships; antarctic explorers were met by upright, curiously formal penguins, clustering round to see who had arrived on their bleak ice floes; in the middle of the most arid deserts sand grouse nest, flying miles to soak their feathers with water to bring back for their thirsty young; high above the tree line on craggy mountains there are birds; in the long darkness of sleepless nights we hear owls hunting.

It is hard to imagine a place in the world without birds. Indeed a world without birds would be hell itself. In the Sixth Book of The Aeneid Virgil wrote, The descent into Hell is easy (Facilis descensus Averno). The word for hell, Averno, means a place without birds, from the Greek a without, and ornis, bird. Avernus, the entrance to hell, was a toxic Italian lake, the fumes from which were said to kill all birds.

All birds are called Birds, claims a medieval bestiary, but there are a lot of them... there are so many sorts... that it is not possible to learn every one. How true for most of us this still is. Even with binoculars, books and cameras, the names of birds still elude us. Not only is it hard to distinguish one bird from another, but the names themselves are confusing. Speaking for myself, I found that birds were not like flowers, whose names had become familiar to me with my first book, and anyway seemed easier to learn. Flowers stay put to be identified, but birds fly away far too quickly. The flash in the bushes too often disappeared long before I could get my glasses adjusted, and sometimes when I had a bird and its name nicely sorted I then found it had been reclassified and I had to start again! Real birders (or twitchers as they are called in Britain) love this challenge, and make lists of birds they have seen and identified, the rarer the better. They travel for miles, squat in muddy bogs, tear their clothes in briars and rise at unwelcoming hours, when the rest of us are sybaritically turning over in bed, or lazily making toast and watching what we glibly call sparrows, thrushes, and robins around our bird feeders.

A robin is a robin, is a robin, we faintly gasp when confronted with a World Checklist of scientific bird names, or a knowledgeable birder in a bog. But we do need to know a little more, if only because robins in America and in Britain are entirely different birds. Blackbirds, orioles, sparrows, warblers, to name only some, refer to different birds in different places.

In America, many birds were named by early naturalists, often European, who sometimes called them after similar birds back home. Mark Catesby, an English naturalist who explored the southern states in the early eighteenth century, wrote that Very few of the Birds having Names consigned to them... except some which had Indian Names, I have calld them after European birds. Catesby would have caused less confusion and fewer ornithological headaches if he had taken notice of the names used by the Indians. Some of the headaches have been shared by me as I have tried to unravel these confusions.

Its a pity if confusion with names puts us off and lessens our enjoyment of some of the loveliest creatures on earth. People can, and always have, enjoyed birds without knowing much about them. On the other hand, to name something can be to understand it a little better. To know one thing from another, wrote Linnaeus, permanent distinct names must be given... recorded and remembered. In 1753 he began sorting the names of plants, animals and birds, and we have been using his system ever since. But Linnaeus would not have wanted us to tremble at the thought of names, for he was trying to simplify, not complicate the system. Latin was the common language of his time, used by scientists to write to one another. Linnaeus himself refused to learn any contemporary European language but his native Swedish, and he couldnt have envisaged a time when all naturalists didnt speak Latin.

All scientific names are Latinized, even if their origins are Greek or from the names of places or people. Linnaeuss new system gave each creature, and plant, two names, that of its genus (or kind), and that of its species (or individual characteristic). Before that, scientific names were long and descriptive. Even if we find our present system hard, using only two (or sometimes three) names, was a great improvement. Linnaeus grouped genera into families, and families into orders. An order (or group of families) always has a name ending in the suffix -iformes, and a family name always ends with the suffix -idae. The name of the genus is a noun (capitalized), followed by the name of the species, an adjective (not capitalized). Birds are also grouped into subfamilies, tribes and qualifying specific names, but I have tried to avoid these and keep scientific names as simple as possible.

We arent helped by taxonomists changing names, because a bird can be reclassified and renamed if it is found to belong to a different group than previously thought. In our era of DNA testing, this happens rather often. It is of small comfort to know that otherwise the accepted name is the one given by Linnaeus in January 1758, or the first name recorded after that date, even if this name seems inappropriate or was misspelled.

Understanding bird names is a combination of ornithology, taxonomy, and etymology, all professional fields, and none of them my own. Nor can I hope to touch on more than a few birds in one short book. But looking at names, at how birds were called in the past and why, connects us to our close relationship with them. Birds have been part of our lives since the beginning of human time. Some of the earliest Egyptian and Persian gods were in the form of birds. Greek gods were shaped like humans, but sometimes even they turned into birds to lure or punish mortals with whom they were so reassuringly intimate.

Part of this fascination with birds was the ability (of most of them) to fly, toward where we thought heaven might be. If, like Icarus, we fell, it was not because of inadequate wings, but because of our inadequate attachment of them. Our angels (unless they are fallen angels), still have the feathery wings of birds, not the wings of bats or beetles. It doesnt seem to bother us that the wings attached to their shoulders couldnt possibly get them airborne. For angels lack the powerful muscles attached to a deep-keeled breastbone, which birds developed in order to fly, and angels dont, as far as I know, have the light, toothless jaws or hollow bones of birds. If they have human voice boxes, our angels could never sing like birds either. Birds make their music in a voice box (or syrinx) placed much lower than ours, where the bronchial tubes divide. Unlike humans, birds can vary their song by taking in air from two directions rather than one. Perhaps thats why our angels are often equipped with harps and lutes.