Actually, Jeff, this birder has always paid attention to the scientific names, because they help me see the relationships among the different birds, and because often they are just more interesting.

As an example of the first: Zonotrichia.? When you see that Harris', White-Crowned, and Golden-Crowned Sparrows are all Zonotrichia, but, say, Chipping, Savannah, and Fox Sparrows are not, you understand why those three Sparrows look more like each other than like any other Sparrows.? The broader name "Sparrow" does not show you that.? The House Sparrow is not even in the same family as our native Sparrows, but you'd never guess from the common name!


As an example of the second: most of the standard common names are simple descriptors, i.e. the color of the crown, wings, breast, eyes, etc., or else the name of some dead naturalist.? Many scientific names are as well.? But as you mentioned, ater -- "dark, brooding, malicious, greedy fellow" -- is a lot more evocative than "brown-headed."? Get really into taxonomy, and you will find organisms with names from Classical mythology, allusions to folklore, or sometimes the taxonomist's quirky sense of humor.

I leave you with a non-bird example of a critter with a really fun scientific name, and a humdrum common name: Kukulcania hibernalis.? Kukulcan was the Mayan serpent-god, depicted on pyramids throughout Yucatan and Guatemala.? Hibernalis means "of winter."? So we have the Mayan serpent-god of winter -- surely much more interesting than the common name: Southern house spider.

Jason Hernandez
Bremerton
jason.hernandez74 at yahoo.com



Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:32:30 -0700
From: Jeff Gibson <gibsondesign at msn.com>
Subject: [Tweeters] Molothrus ater
To: tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <BLU178-W10BF988FE3FD3B0386AC99C92A0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hey tweeter dude's, just got back from watching a Molothrus ater show - awesome!
Like,
I know, dude, Molothrus ater might sound like the name of a heavy metal
band, but really it's just the Latin binomial for Brown - headed
Cowbird. The "high-priced name" some would say. Just learned that.
I
stumbled across that funny name because I was looking up info about the
Cowbird on Seattle Audubon's Birdweb, and there it was. Probably like
most of you I don't pay too much attention to the Latin names of birds
because bird namer's have done such a good job on the common names that
we all don't really have to remember the "scientific" names, unlike many
other animals, plants, fungoids,? etc.
This all came up as I sat
here on my computer in Port Townsend and noted a female Cowbird flying
up to the Fuchsia magellanica just outside the window. The cowbird got
run off by a male Rufous hummer in short order- the fuchsia is now
blooming and the cowbird got in the hummers airspace. You know how those
hummers are.
Well,? yesterday I saw the female cowbird again at the
fuchsia bush. This time run off by a Towhee, that seemed to come out of
nowhere. Putting those two cowbird sightings together I suspected the
cowbird was up to something, as they are prone to do, like trying to
find somebody else's nest to lay their egg in.
Just a few minutes ago
I went out to do a quick check for a Towhee nest in the bush, which is
pretty small. And while trying to do a gentle look a bird crept out of
the far side of the bush, which my dear ol' dad saw; "hey there's a
bird!" he said. And it was the Towhee, doing a killdeer- like
"decoy-run" across the lawn, with it's white spotted tail fanned out and
held low, obviously trying to get my attention. The female jumped on
the nearby fence top, joined by the male and they both started giving
distress calls. My dad thought it was kind of cool, and so did I.? We
then left the Towhee's alone.
Cowbirds have an unsavory reputation,
given their nest parasitism habits, but I've always found them
interesting. Looking up the Latin name a bit I could only find that
Molothrus was just a label for cowbird, but ater meant variously " dark,
brooding, malicious, greedy fellow"
"Time out!" I cried, "that's
avian misandry! Oh sure label the guy, when it's the female doing the
dirty work of nest invasion. We all hear about misogyny all the time -
hey, what about that darn misandry"- a word so rarely used I had to
search for it.
Oh well, nobody's perfect, even the male Cowbird. Both
male and female are attractive in their own way, and the male has that
delicious call that sound's so much like water.
Names and words are sort of funny, dude. Even girls call each other dude! these days.
Jeff Gibsonwatching the Cows, inPort Townsend? Wa ??? ??