Hello Tweets!

I'm trying to track down the etymology of the scientific name of the
dovekie (aka Little Auk). Started out with a simple request "What does
'Alle alle' mean?" One source, "The Dictionary of American Bird Names"
(Revised, Choate & Paynter 1984) claims that "alle" is Swedish for the
bird dovekie. More provocatively, "Birds--Their Latin Names Explained"
(Gotch 1981) says this:

Dovekie 'Alle alle'
'allex' (Latin) the great toe; probably a reference to the lack of the
hind toe, the 'x' being deleted to show that the toe is missing.

Now just a darn minute, here. This sounds pretty odd. A letter left
off to show something is missing? Is like writing "Ibe" to show that
the ibex isn't there! (Actually, not a bad thing, an ibex not being
here, I mean.) Can anyone offer a more authoritative derivation for
"Alle?" Or convince me that this letter being removed does refer to
the bird's toe-challenged state? Wish I could say "it's Greek to me,"
but it's Latin. Or Swedish, maybe?

By the way, I've just learned that 'Alle alle' is a tautonym, a
scientific name that repeats itself. A trinomial name is 'Naja naja
naja,' a cobra that I'm also glad isn't here. From Mark Isaak's web
page, I also discovered that "auks" is a reversal of "skua." His quite
distracting site is here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxWord.html

A nice pair of Hooded Mergansers is down at Shilshole Marina yesterday
morning. What great birds!

Thanks for any help!

Jeff McLean
Ballard
jdm at drizzle dot com