Colloquial bird names

In a recent string, NorthernStar referred to a bird as a whiskey jack. Having never heard that name before, I found out that it was a colloquial name for the gray jay. I would be interested to collect other such colloquial bird names from other members.

The ones that come to mind for me are "butter-butt" for the yellow-rumped warbler and "waterturkey" for the anhinga.

'Yellowhammer', which has the distinction of being a common name in Europe (for Emberiza citrinella), and a colloquial name in the United States for the Northern Flicker (Alabama's State Bird is the Yellowhammer).

ETA: Yellowhammers in the US are eastern birds, because they are the yellow-shafted variety. Western birds are red-shafted.

I put this in the other thread, then thought it should go here:

The other common name for the whiskey jack is the Canada jay. I notice all my recent bird books have only gray jay listed, but no-one I know actually calls them that.

The nighthawk is sometimes referred to as "mosquito hawk".

Grouse (of all kinds, even sometimes ptarmigan) locally are referred to as "chickens" - As in "I went hunting chickens" or "I saw six chickens in the bush today"

We get yellow-shafted flickers here in northwestern Canada, in the summer, so they aren't just an eastern bird, but I've never heard them called yellowhammer here.

I have two whole books of these for British birds. One is The Oxford Book of British Bird Names by W. B. Lockwood, which takes a historical approach, recording the dates at which names were first used. The other is British Names of Birds by Christine E. Jackson, which takes a geographical approach, recording which names are used in the different counties of Britain.

From the latter, we learn that the goldfinch is (or more likely was) called a nicker nocker in Cheshire, Lady with the twelve flounces in Shropshire, a gool french in Devon, a molenek in Cornwall, a green lennart in Northumberland, and many other names in different parts of the country.

Timberdoodle, thunder-pumper, bluebill, skunk duck...aw, I could go on for ever about North American birds.

OK, but what are those in the bird book?

American woodcock, American bittern, scaup (both greater and lesser).

I'm not certain what a skunk duck is--presumably a black and white duck. Labrador ducks used to be known as skunk ducks, but seeing as they are extinct, I'm not certain that anyone who may have called them that is still alive!

#4 Lady with the twelve flounces

With all due respect to Ms Jackson, I find it difficult to believe that the goldfinch was ever commonly known by a name consisting of five words and seven syllables. I suspect she found it in some poem or song.

"Skunk duck" is Surf Scoter. Perhaps because of it's black/white head pattern; perhaps because of its taste!

It's Christmas Count Season and we're seeing a lot of "Winter Chippies" (American Tree Sparrows).

A lingering Chipping Sparrow would be a pretty good CBC bird for New England.

>8 alaudacorax: Possibly, but this is what Jackson has to say about her sources:

The terms included have been taken from authoritative works of reference and the work of ornithologists. Any terms which came to my notice merely from hearsay, if they could not be checked against any reliable sources, have been excluded. Because of this insistance on reliable authorities I was careful to follow their spelling and punctuation, without editing. This is the reason for separate entries for apparently identical terms such as “hay-bird, haybird”, and “ebb sleeper, ebb-sleeper”.
The List of British names of Birds is based on H. Kirke Swann’s 'A Dictionary of English and Folk Names of British Birds, with their history, meaning and first usage' (Witherby 1912), omitting his Gaelic and Welsh names. In addition over eleven hundred terms collected whilst reading some two hundred books on ornithology over the past two years have been included. Many pre-war county lists of birds carried notes of local names and I am particularly indebted to …

The book was written in 1968.

#10 - I still suspect it originated in some writer's flight of fancy.

Irrespective of that, I've been meaning to get a book like one of these for years. What do you think of the Jackson and the Lockwood? Would you recommend either - or both?

Just to complicate things further, I find the Kirke Swann is still available and in a relatively inexpensive paperback edition. Like the other two, I can't find any reviews, though.

Note to myself: repeat over and over - 'I must not buy all three ... I must not buy all three'.

I'm never going to get rich reading LibraryThing.

>11 alaudacorax: I shouldn't be surprised.

The basic distinction is as in 4 above. The Jackson has nothing but lists of names - no discussion. The Lockwood has fewer names (but at least some Jackson doesn't), in dictionary format, and each has two or three lines at least of description. Some entries are a good bit longer: for example there is a column for 'bumble' - a bittern - ranging from a quote from Chaucer (' a bitorne bumbleth in the mire'), through the changes in what we say the bird does from bumble, to bump, to boom nowadays.

So it's a question of what may interest you. For what it's worth I paid £8.50 for the Jackson and £5.50 for the Lockwood (unless I bargained), an indeterminate time ago, both first (only?) editions in very good/near fine condition.

I wish you hadn't mentioned that the Kirke Swann was available. Two's enough, surely?

#12 - Thanks of the info, affle.

I'm sorry if I'm putting temptation in your way but, from what you've written and from the Swann's full title - A dictionary of English and folk-names of British birds; with their history, meaning, and first usage, and the folk-lore, weather-lore, legends, etc., relating to the more familiar species - the latter seems much the most tempting of the three to me.

My mom was a true Bonnacker, a townie born and raised in East Hampton, Long Island, long before Billy Joel, Paul McCartney and P-Diddy moved in.

In the old days, they used to call the drunks in town "Sheldrakes", because Red-breasted Mergansers (also) have red eyes!

#14 - Hah! I love that. I've been looking at pictures online and I can see exactly what they were getting at - not only the glowing eyes but the birds' 'hair' all ruffled up on top - exactly like some dishevelled drunk.

That's great! I never thought of that rakish crest as reminiscent of a mussed-haired drunk.

I just grabbed another copy of Birds of America from the Goodwill outlet bin for 50 cents. These doorstops are available online for 75 cents; I'd encourage anyone to pick up a copy for the gorgeous Fuertes prints, alone.

But I digress. 'You want colloquiums? This 1917 book has hundreds!

Where do I start? 'How about taxonomic-ally:

American Bittern - Bog Bull, Thunder pumper, Mire drum, Butterbump, etc.

Louisiana Heron - Lady of the waters

White-winged Scoter - Bell-tongue coot

Peregrine Falcon - Duck hawk, Wandering Falcon

Screech Owl - Shivering Owl, Little Dukelet

Pileated woodpecker - Logcock

Blue Jay - Corn thief, Blue Coat, Nest robber

Tree Swallow - stump swallow

Eastern Bluebird - Blue red-breast

Chestnut-sided Warbler - Bloody-side

American Redstart - Fire tail

American Goldfinch - Thistle bird, shiner, beet bird

Eastern Meadowlark - Crescent stare

House Sparrow - Tramp, Hoodlum

Not a colloquialism exactly, but a regional nickname: The common yellowthroat is still called the Maryland yellowthroat by many Maryland birders. The newsletter of the Maryland Ornithological Society is "The Maryland Yellowthroat'. The name change went down poorly around here.

Starring this for later. I have a feeling many more revelations are in store...

A slightly different angle, from Africa, where many people (including my wife) know the local names for a bird but don't know the English name. The local names often mimic the sound or describe the behaviour of the bird.

My wife loves looking at birds with me, and is pretty good at spotting them, but then it's usually down to me to identify them from the bird book. She laughs when I then write them down, asking why I don't just enjoy the bird in the present moment rather than needing to document its existence. We've talked about it and we have agreed that this is one of the cultural differences between Africa and Europe. Africa comes from an oral tradition, whereas Europeans have a written tradition. Europeans didn't "discover" anything in Africa, as obviously local people had already known about these things for centuries, but the contribution made by Europeans was to document them and make them accessible to a wider audience than the local oral tradition would have reached. I suppose that's why so many African birds and animals are known internationally by the names of European explorers and naturalists, and likewise geographical features, rather than their original local names.

>19 John5918: Fascinating theory! My own experience is that I cannot remember a word unless I've seen it spelled out first, then I can recall it easily, and that goes for English/French/German, etc. Whereas my children were taught phonetics first, which messed them up when it came to real words, the spelling of which still elicits frustration. I cannot read social media posts without getting irate, so opt out. But the storytelling aspect, be it African or Indigenous Canadians or elsewhere, is an extremely interesting twist to the matter!

Concerning the Whisky Jack, I kind of like the 'camp robber' banner!

"The Canada jay (Perisoreus canadensis), also gray jay, grey jay, camp robber, or whisky jack, is a passerine bird of the family Corvidae. It is found in boreal forests of North America north to the tree line, and in the Rocky Mountains subalpine zone south to New Mexico and Arizona."

Side note:
Canadians spell whisky with no 'e' as do the British, so when I see whiskey with an 'e' my assumption is that the speaker/writer is from the USA, not that Whisky Jack or Whiskey Jack is correct or incorrect.

>20 frahealee:

And the Irish also spell it whiskey with an e, which is perhaps where the US usage comes from?

>21 John5918: My word. No wonder I'm confused. I thought having one bird called five different names in five different places in England alone was over the top!

>21 John5918: Very interesting. Whiskey Jack, in the US is a corruption of an Algonquin Indian Term meaning "trickster god", and a bird we call the gray jay.

>18 frahealee: thanks for bumping the thread!

Here in the Carolinas juncos are referred to as "snow birds" for showing up at feeders before or after a winter storm.

Speaking of...I see that my beloved "Slate-colored" juncos are now "Dark-eyed" or "Northern" juncos in newer bird books.

Also, "Baltimore" orioles are now "Northern" orioles, and "Myrtle" warblers are now referred to as "Yellow-rumped" warblers.

Who makes these decisions to rename species?

fuzzi (#24):

"Northern" Orioles haven't been a thing for quite some time now - they were split in the 1990s back into Baltimore and Bullock's. "Myrtle" and "Audubon's" Warblers were lumped into Yellow-rumped long enough ago (the 1970s, I think) that people are starting to think about splitting them up again. So I think your "newer" books must be pretty old if they're still lumping orioles!

In case you were serious with your final question, rather than rhetorical, it's the AOU (American Ornithologist's Union, which I just now learned has itself been "lumped" with another group and renamed the American Ornithological Society). They make both decisions on renaming (as in the case of the Long-tailed Duck which used to have a very racist name I will not repeat here - google it if don't know and are curious) and on lumping/splitting.

>25 lorax: I've been a birder since the 1960s, so some of the guides I used were old. I still don't see the need to change the bird names unless, in the case of the duck, society's norms have evolved, or a new variation needs to be split.

>26 fuzzi:

As I understand it birds used to be classified primarily by their physical features, but nowadays they are being classified by DNA. Thus a bird which was classified as part of one species due to its physical characteristics has now been found by DNA analysis to belong to a different species, hence the name changes. It has confused me a lot as my field guides, even those which have been updated in recent years, do not always coincide with what I find when I'm registering my sightings online on eBird. Googling usually gets me an explanation of each case.

fuzzi (#26):

The only case I can think of of a straight rename like you describe is the Canada Jay, formerly the Grey Jay, and that was something of a special case: https://www.audubon.org/news/the-gray-jay-will-officially-be-called-canada-jay-a...

Usually it's a combination/separation, although sometimes (as in the case of "Magnificent" Hummingbird to Rivoli's Hummingbird) only one is found in the US so it seems like just an arbitrary rename.

>28 lorax: I was sure happy with that change. I'd grown up with it as Canada jay, even though the official change is older than I am. No doubt it was a product of using my mom's bird books. When I started getting my own bird guides, the name had changed to grey jay, for no good reason that I knew of. It was still usually known as Canada Jay or Whisky Jack, except in bird books.