THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 27, 1994 TAG: 9406250008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: George Hebert
DATELINE: 940627 LENGTH: Medium
The puzzle constructors obviously hope that puzzle workers will stumble a bit over such a strange name for a duck. And strange it is, certainly to me.
{REST} Also, every time I fill in four squares with s-m-e-w, I'm reminded of a whole array of peculiar-to-baffling bird names.
There is ``oldsquaw,'' the designation given another duck. This name appeared, without elaboration, in a recent list of wildfowl in a news account. I can't remember what the story was about, but that monicker sure left an impression - just as it did when I first ran across it in a bird identification book.
Another example, a real mouthful, and still a boggler though it crops up quite a bit in the bird-watching arena, is the ``prothonotary warbler.'' The only dictionary explanations I've found for ``prothonotary'' refer to secretarial or clerky things - which are pretty hard for me to relate to a warbler.
Or how about the ``ovenbird''? However did a warbler get a label like that?
And there are a great many more bird names that set off questions. However, often there is an easily found root - as in a foreign term, or in a physical trait (the pomarine of ``pomarine jaeger'' refers to a scaly covering of the nostrils), or a spelling-out of the creature's call (say, ``killdee'' converted into ``killdeer'').
The strangeness I'm talking about lies in eyebrow-raising terms that are not simply explained, or at least the explanations are left out of the bird books I use.
Some other feathered species fall into my zone of bewilderment for a different reason - because they carry descriptive appellations that just don't jibe with what I see, either in nature or in color illustrations.
Take the ``red-bellied woodpecker.'' If there is any red at all on the belly of this one, I have never seen it in the specimens I've spotted. And in any event, the blazing scarlet on the top and back of its head is the red part that grabs the eye.
A close relation, the ``golden-fronted woodpecker,'' a resident of the far southern reaches of the continent, seems to have a faint orange tinge in front. But my book shows, and describes as this bird's distinguishing mark, a large and vibrant orange patch on the back of its neck.
Then there is the marsh-frequenter called the ``yellow-crowned night heron,'' quite common hereabouts. But why the ``yellow-crowned'' tag when the yellow (which I see only in the illustrations) is so scant and the snowball white of most of the head is what stands out so stunningly?
The wild world has oddities aplenty even without the intrusion of man the namer and classifier. But with his meddling: Boy, oh boy!
by CNB