Subject: BINA (bird names)
Date: Jun 26 11:07:07 1995
From: H. Cui - cccc at u.washington.edu


Teresa Michelsen writes:

> The other thing that would help me is if
> someone would post where these come from, then maybe I could get a
> comprehensive list for reference. That would help with postings from other
> discussion groups like the bird ID guide.

I second the emotion that 4 letter abreviations are hard to read,
and should be avoided except in later references to a bird that has
already been spelled out.

There is, in fact, a certain logic to these abbreviations in that they
follow some simple rules for naming. This makes writing the abbreviations
easy, but reading them difficult, regardless.

Here are the rules as best as I can remember.

(1) For one-word bird names such as Ovenbird, the first four letters
make up the abbreviation, OVEN.
(2) For two-word names such as Yellow Warbler, the first two letters
of each word provide the abbreviation, YEWA.
If either word is hyphenated however, then the first letter of
each part of the hyphenation is used rather than the first two
letters. The abbreviation for Great-crested Flycatcher is thus GCFL.
(Note FL is used for flycatcher, not FC)
(3) For three-word names such as Great Blue Heron, use the first letter
of each of the species part (Great Blue), and the first two letters
of the family part (Heron), which gives us GBHE.
Unless, of course a word is hyphenated, as in Greater Black-backed
Gull, which should be GBBG.
(4) For four-word names, it is the first letter of each name.
Black and White Warbler should be BAWW (please correct me if I'm wrong).
The abbreviation BWWA for example, stands for Blue-winged Warbler.
(5) Any ambiguities are taken care of as special cases. For example
Black-throated Green Warbler and Black-throated Gray Warbler
would both be BTGW. In such a case, I believe that the most
common one is abbreviated according to the above rules, then the
other is abbreviated arbitrarily. Comments ?

Now, how does one abbreviate Black-backed Three-toed Woodpecker ?

Hope I am not iterating a previous posting here.

Neil J. Fergusson ******************
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