On 12/31/98, Don Baccus wrote:

[snip]

> Birds don't have hair, and the supercillium, as far as I know, is
just
> a plumage mark with no skeletal feature underlying it, so the term
> "eyebrow" would seem doubly inaccurate.

Although it's been a long time, if I recall my avian physiology
correctly the superciliary is one of the pterylae, or feather subtracts
of a bird's head. So, in a sense, it has a physiological basis,
although non-skeletal. That would suggest why many birds have a
distinctive supercilium, and also why the word has lingered in most
bird texts.
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P W (Bill) Smith
Grays Harbor, Washington USA
pwsmith at techline.com