Subject: TWEETERS digest 2437
Date: Mar 21 17:40:46 2001
From: Mary Teesdale - mteesdale at hotmail.com


Doesn't 'Water Ouzel' sound better than 'Dipper'? I was sorry to see that
name change.

Mary Teesdale
Bellingham, Wa


I shall stick out my neck and proclaim that I prefer our original American
name. I like old, one-word handles like Mallard, Sora, Rook, and Ruff; there
are precious few of them left, and taxonomic revisions are steadily
whittling them down.
Some of the names biologists have come up with in the last few years
would
freeze a poet's blood. Perhaps the worst such neologism is
"Pacific-slope
Flycatcher." How uneuphonious can one get? It's enough to give William
Jennings Bryan a tongue of lead.
Another name that has apparently bit the dust is "Rufous-sided Towhee."
Isn't it "Eastern Towhee" now? I always detected an endearing
foppishness in
the name of that bird, while names with geographical directions in them
never have done much for me.
I guess once in a while it's fun to say "Baldpate" or "Pigeon Hawk,"
and
now my Oldsquaw is fast becoming one of those quaint old names used by
show-offs and the infirm. It wouldn't be so hard on us lovers of good
names,
though, if the biologists would just learn to put the same effort into
coining timeless names, as into their quest for knowledge.

Yours curmudgeonly,
Gary Bletsch
Yanbu, Saudi ArFrom: "Gary Bletsch" <garybletsch at yahoo.com>


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