On Mar 17, 2011, at 12:20 PM, Barry Ulman wrote:

> How about Blue Jay (meaning Steller's Jay)?

I'd let that one go as a local name blue jay. It's just descriptive though confusing as heck for birders who insist on precision ("Where did you see it!!!"). A bit like the old farmer's names for birds.

On Mar 17, 2011, at 1:12 PM, Barry Ulman wrote:

> PILE-eated or PILL-eated Woodpecker?

PILL-eated (from the Latin pileatus for cap or hat)

> PAR-ula or Par-U-la Warbler?

Pa-Ru-La (from the Latin like Parus (so parid the tits and chickadees))

> To-WEE or TOW-hee?

I think this is just a regional difference. The OED gives both pronunciations.

> PLUV-er or PLO-ver?

PLUV-er (from the English who originated this word)

> PhainoPEP-la or Phaino-PEEP-la?

PhainoPEP-la (from the Latin for silky robe)

> LA-zuli Bunting or La-ZU-li Bunting?

La-ZU-lie (like Lapis Lazuli for their blue coloration)

> I've heard experienced birders pronounce all those names both ways. Is there really a "correct" way to pronounce those names?

Yes and no. When they're used as words elsewhere that already have a given pronunciation or in a lot of cases derived from Latin there are preexisting. Clearly the decline of classics has something to do with it! Of course you can change that if enough people pronounce the name "incorrectly" given that US English is a dynamic language.

Note that as a Brit I'm quite happy with odd pronunciations e.g Cholmondeley is "chumley"; Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw". It's rather a shame we don't have a Cholmondeley's Duck or Featherstonehaugh's Gull.

But there is a "Zitting Cisticola".

Now how did you just say that think your head? You know the little voice in your head that's reading along with you as you read this.

Sean Dooley, both an ace birder and a comedy writer (for a day job), wrote a great Aussie birding book called "Anoraks to Zitting Cisticola". It's a sort of A to Z of Aussie birding terms that follows up on his excellent book "The Big Twitch" which documented his effort at an Australian Big Year to see more than 700 bird species in the Australian region in one calender year.

The last entry is "Zitting Cisticola" and is all about how its name (and other odd bird names) are pronounced. Sean had this to say:

> Zitting Cisticola / by far the rarer of the two cisticolas (small marsh loving warbler-type birds), in Australia, the Zitting Cisticola is extremely hard to see (see VISITING BIRDERS) and apparently even harder to pronounce.
>
> Nothing gives a beginner away more quickly than mispronouncing the names of birds. It shouldn?t matter, but it does, and when I hear an experienced old-timer pronounce ?plover? so that it rhymes with ?clover? (it should rhyme with ?lover?), I can?t help but give a misplaced smirk of superiority.
>
> So for the record, if you want to avoid the sniggers of other birders, cisticola should be pronounced ?sis-tick-er-la? with the last syllables running together so that it sounds as though you are saying you have tickled your sister, not as if it was the latest flavour of Coke. And certainly try and avoid, as one friend used to say, ?cisticular?. Particularly with the Zitting before it; people will think you are suffering from a medical condition. ?Sean was a healthy young man until he went to Darwin and picked up Zitting Cisticulars. Now it hurts when he pees.?

I think only the folks who can't pronounce Zitting Cisticola properly would call it a Streaked Fantail Warbler. Or perhaps a Streaked Featherstonehaugh Warbler.

Clearly it's a good job we don't have any Cisticolas in the New World but if you are curious you can see pictures of the Zitting Cisticola

http://www.google.com/images?&q=Zitting+Cisticola

I seriously recommend both of Sean Dooley bird books.

They can be an antidote for this sort of thing.
--
Kevin Purcell (Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA)
kevinpurcell at pobox.com
http://kevinpurcell.posterous.com
http://twitter.com/kevinpurcell