View From The Shed by Volunteer Shaun - CALL ME BY MY NAME

CALL ME BY MY NAME

Regular readers will know that I love to dig into my collection of old dictionaries and find alternative names that were given to bird species in the past. I do this partly because it’s fun and occasionally a folk name will raise a chuckle (for me and I hope for you readers as well), but also because it’s fascinating to see how these labels have been created to describe the bird, and how they’ve changed over time.

Let’s take the subject of last week’s blog, the Black-Headed Gull, as an example. In years gone by, had you been travelling around Britain and seen one of these most common of gulls, you would have had to adapt your language as you moved from place to place when describing what you had seen to a local person.

You’d have to call them Carr Swallow, Pick Mire or Pick Tarn in different parts of Britain. Part of these names refer to where they might be found. As for the other part, the prefix ‘pick’ is predominantly Scottish, a corruption of the word “pitch”. This of course refers to their supposedly pitch black heads - although we all know that it’s really a lovely dark chocolate brown. Other names such as White Crow and Pigeon Gull show how common these birds have always been - as common as Crows and Pigeons.

And just to be confusing some people called them the Pewit. That’s a fine name, but in many parts of the country it was applied to the Lapwing (and still occasionally is). Fortunately that soon evolved into the BHG becoming the Pewit Gull. That’s much clearer… isn’t it?

In several spots the Black-Heads also went by a different moniker, one which shows precisely how many birds have got their names. Imagine you were magically transported to the fifteenth-century and you discreetly overheard some fifteenth-century farmers - let’s call them Esmond and Remington, a pair of impressive Old English names that must surely be due for revival. They had just spent a sweaty morning ploughing their field and stopped for a rest and a flagon of ale. Behind them they noticed some gulls feeding among the newly-turned earth. “My, yon’s a bonnie gull”, exclaimed one, because that’s how they talked back then. His friend replied, “What, the one with the black cap?”.  They began to notice these same birds on a regular basis, and so the noisy gull that we at Old Moor describe as having a black head became known, in their area at least, as a “Black Cap”.

Meanwhile, in another part of the country some other people were having the same conversation, only the bird they saw was small and flitted around trees. Could it be the bird we now call Black Cap? Well yes, possibly. In some areas that little warbler was precisely the bird they meant when they said those words. But in other places, “Black Cap” might have referred to the bird we call Coal Tit. Then again Great Tit, Marsh and Willow Tits have all been recorded with the label “Black Cap”. Birdwatchers of centuries ago must have had really small but confusing year lists.

The oldest known bird name is the generic GOOSE. People have been using that same sound to refer to that particular group of birds for at least five thousand years. I find it incredulous that if I said, “Goose!” to a Neolithic hunter/gatherer from 3,000 BC, he or she would understand the word and recognise the bird to which it refers. I wonder what he’d do if I shouted, “Duck!” (sorry). That’s one that hasn’t changed given time, but many individual species names have gone through several iterations as we have learned more about them. And this name game shows no sign of stopping, only instead of observant farmers and clerics, we now have ornithological genetic scientists to blame/thank. These scientists have a habit of discovering new things about the birds we know and love, some of which have caused necessary amendments to their scientific classification and name.

The bird that my grandfather knew as a Hedge Sparrow was proven to be no kind of sparrow at all. It’s actually from the Accentor family of birds and originated in the Himalayan region of Asia. We know it now as a Dunnock. It’s still a great little bird with fascinating breeding habits. One day I’ll work out a way to tell that story in a family friendly blog. In the meantime, if you really want to know, Google is your friend. Just don’t blame me if you’re shocked by what you find.

Then there is that Old Moor celebrity, Panurus biarmicus. This is a bird that so many people want to see but so few do. Since it was first scientifically described in 1758 it has been reclassified more than any UK breeding bird. It’s been scientifically named as the Bearded Tit-Mouse, Bearded Parrotbill and Least Butcher-Bird before settling on its current (and another former) title of Bearded Reedling. I just call it the Freddie Mercury bird because of its impressive moustache.

Of course it’s not only a bird’s appearance that is the source of its title. Some are called after their favourite location while others are given titles in celebration of famous figures of the day. But this too is open to amendment. Name changes are currently being considered due to the suitability of some people celebrated by these honorific names. Some of these individuals have a dark history which makes their commemoration inappropriate for many in the 21st century. Reminding us of these people’s dark pasts by referring to them with bird names can be problematic due to them having links to regrettable practices such as genocide, colonisation and slavery. So birds named after Audubon, Bewick, Stellar, Wilson and others may soon find themselves renamed in our guide books.

The English language is constantly evolving so it makes sense that our little birdie corner of that linguistic world should be just as fluid. I just wish that I could keep up.