Translating the Language of Birds William Young Arlington, Virginia
® THE LANGUAGE QUARTERLY Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 Winter 2003 VERBATIM Editor: Erin McKean Founding Editor: Laurence Urdang Translating the Language of Birds William Young Arlington, Virginia any hobbyists who look for wild birds call izations and use songs or calls to create colloquial Mthemselves birders rather than birdwatchers. names. The willet, which was named for its song, also In addition to being able to identify species by is known by the colloquial names bill-willie, pill-wil- plumage, skilled birders tend to be familiar with let, pill-will-willet, and will-willet. In Australia, a col- bird songs and calls. Vocalizations sometimes pro- loquial name for the magpie-lark is peewit. vide the only reliable information for identifying a Many bird names describe a vocalization rather species in the field. than represent the actual sound. Examples include Birders who are not musically gifted (including the laughing gull, whistling kite, piping plover, me) face the difficult task of learning and remember- whooping crane, chipping sparrow, plaintive cuck- ing vocalizations for hundreds of species. The chal- oo, melodious blackbird, musician wren, snoring lenge is daunting because a particular species may rail, and dark chanting goshawk. Cisticolas, which utter multiple territorial songs, contact calls and are small, brownish songbirds found mostly in regional dialects. An effective learning technique is to Africa, are accomplished vocalists. The adjectives translate the vocalizations of a species into familiar used in their species names include bubbling, chat- words or phrases. Just as many people cannot tering, chirping, churring, croaking, piping, rat- remember lyrics to popular songs without singing the tling, siffling, singing, tinkling, tink-tink, trilling, melody, many birders cannot remember bird songs wailing, whistling, and zitting.
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