Category: Biology

Aegithalos caudatus, the long-tailed tit, undertaking aerobatic manouevres among the bursting buds of hawthorn, the claws of dog rose and bramble in a hedgerow full of avian life.

You wouldn’t have heard the plaintive and ubiquitous sound of an English summer, the incessant “coo-coo-coooh” of a collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) here until 1953, when they first began to settle and breed.

According to Wikipedia:

The collared dove is not migratory, but is strongly dispersive. Over the last century, it has been one of the great colonisers of the bird world, travelling far beyond its native range to colonize colder countries, becoming naturalised in several. Its original range at the end of the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka. In 1838 it was reported in Bulgaria, but not until the 20th century did it expand across Europe, appearing in parts of the Balkans between 1900—1920, and then spreading rapidly northwest, reaching Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953 (breeding for the first time in 1956), Ireland in 1959, and the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s

Of course, they now feature in endless outdoor scenes in period dramas and films set well before 1953; you can think of them as avian continuity errors.

Seems that I have been prattling on about this for years. Just found an old archived blog entry from January 2005 that mentions the same continuity error!

Three birds in one: lapwing, peewit (pewit), green plover (Vanellus vanellus)…actually also known as a tuit (tew-it), so four birds in one. The fact that its scientific binomial (colloquially known as a species’ “Latin name” is in this species case a tautonym (both parts are the same word), this indicates that this species is the “type” for its family. Similarly, Rattus rattus (black rat), Bufo bufo (common toad), Carduelis carduelis (goldfinch), Gorilla gorilla gorilla (Western lowland gorilla, a tautonymic trinomial in this case), Bison bison (American bison), Coccothraustes coccothraustes (hawfinch), more tautonyms here.

But, back to the lapwing. Its peewit and tuit names are onomatopoeia for its call, it’s a plover and it’s green, hence green plover. Lapwing refers to the bird’s decoy strategy for feigning injury to lure predators away from its ground nest and thus its eggs or chicks.

Pleased to see this great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) clinging to a vertical branch at the top of a tall-ish ash tree in the local woodland (on 6th February 2017), as is their wont. Usually, they’ll manoeuvre themselves to the farside of a tree trunk and you’ll only really know they are there if they’re pecking, but this bird presumably hadn’t seen or heard me coming. The first part of their scientific binomial is a portmanteau of the Greek words dendron, tree and kopos striking, obvious really, tree striker. The major is from the Latin maior, meaning greater, obvs.

The brightly coloured breast of the robin (Erithacus rubecula) is familiar to Brits particularly at Christmas, although both male and female birds have their rusty pectoral plumage throughout the year. Both male and female sing throughout the year although they have an autumnal territorial call and a spring mating call. They are, according to the polls, the most popular species in the UK, despite looking cute they are aggressively territorial and quick to drive away or even attack intruders on their patch.

At one time European robins were classified scientifically as Turdus, thrushes, but they don’t really resemble any of the thrush family (thrush, blackbird, redwing etc) although their chicks are speckled. These days robins are classed as Old World flycatchers. Erithacus is from the Greek for an unknown bird while rubecula is from the Latin for red (hence obviously, ruby). Of course, their red breast is anything but red more “Heinz Cream of Tomato soup spilled down your white teeshirt” if anything.

Indeed, the distinctive breast of both sexes in this species was called redbreast simply because sixteenth-century English birdwatchers didn’t have a word for the colour orange, that had arrived on these shores circa 1300 with the eponymous fruit, but wasn’t used for the hue until later.

Robins definitely have a place of affection in our hearts, viz all that Christmas imagery, although I’m not entirely sure which Robin is being sung about in the song “Rockin’ Robin” by Leon Rene (aka Jimmie Thomas) and made famous by Bobby Day in 1958 and then again by Michael Jackson in 1972). The American robin (Turdus migratorius) also has a colourful, orange, breast, but is very much a thrush, as you can see in this photo.

Red admiral* butterflies are black and white with orange regions on their wings, definitely not red. Similarly, redheads (people with orange) hair are thus called and as to the term “carrot top” that has to be even more modern because carrots used to be purple.

Etymolonline has the skinny on the origins of orange:

ca. 1300, of the fruit, from Old French orange, orenge (12c., Modern French orange), from Medieval Latin pomum de orenge, from Italian arancia, originally narancia (Venetian naranza), alteration of Arabic naranj, from Persian narang, from Sanskrit naranga-s “orange tree,” of uncertain origin. Not used as a color word until 1540s.

UPDATE: The redshank (Tringa totanus) similar problem with the name.

I should perhaps update this old blog post to mention why so many things in nature that are obviously pink are known as red somethings…spoiler alert, it’s because we didn’t have the word for pink, the colour, until they’d all acquired their red names. For example, Red Campion.

The colour pink almost certainly comes from the common name for Dianthus, carnations, which are that colour. Caucasian flesh coloured in fact, hence the name carnation. Carnis, being Latin for flesh as in carnivore and made flesh, incarnate.

There is some argument about the etymology of the Red Admiral, not the red part, but the admiral. It was most likely that it’s not a nautical allusion, but a bastardisation of the word admirable. There is evidence that it was originally called a Red Admirable. Author and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov insisted that this was true, arguing vehemently against those who said it was a nautical allusion. He has recently been vindicated according to Peter Marren, author of Emperors, Admirals, and Chimney Sweepers.

Black-headed gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)

In summer the head bird has a dark, chocolate-brown head, but in winter the dark plumage is relegated to a dark spot on each temple. Looks like this fella is starting to take on more colour in time for the mating season. “Most definitely not a seagull,” says the RSPB, “and is found commonly almost anywhere inland.”

Breeds across Asia and Europe and even coastal eastern Canada. Most of the population is migratory and winters further south, but some birds reside in the milder westernmost areas of Europe. It’s scientific binomial, what most people refer to as a species’ Latin name, comes from the Greek khroizo, “to colour”, and kephale, “head”. The ridibundus is Latin for “laughing”, from ridere “to laugh”.

For those who care about such things, this image was acquired from my office window with a Canon 6D SLR hosting a Sigma 150-600mm lens. f6.3, 1/3200s, ISO 1250.

Selected photos of birds I’ve shot recently with a 600mm Sigma on my 6D, allows you to get quite close without disturbing our avian friends, at least until they are startled by the sound of the camera shutter. Click the kingfisher to open my Flickr gallery or visit the Fluidr version of the page here.

Silly big zoom lens on my camera lets you get up close and personal with the garden birds…and even a heron that landed on a neighbour’s fish pond: