First let me thank all of you who have so willingly discussed
pronunciations. What about Vaux's and Murre? Anyway, I'm happy to add
my bit about Australian pronunciations, since I brought it up.

Gerygone is pronounced two different ways, as I've heard it:

Grig' uh nee (grig rhymes with trig) or Jur ig' uh nee (jur as in jury)

no one says Jerry-gone (as in, he's not here anymore).


I enjoyed hearing about the huge flocks of budgies. We drove all over
the interior of Australia last year for six months and saw only a few
small flocks, maybe in the hundreds. My greatest meditative state in
watching a mass of flying creatures came in Kununurra in West Australia -
we stood by a lake and watched thousands and thousands of flying foxes
(fruit eating bats) passing overhead as they went out for the night
against a brilliant orange sunset sky. Pretty great.

If anyone is interested in Australian birds or planning travel in Oz, I
hope you will feel free to contact me. I have plenty of advice, more
than a thousand slides of birds and other interesting things, and even
some friends down under who are interested in meeting American birdos.

Cheers


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Becca Knox rknox at scn.org Seattle, Washington
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