BIRD WORDS

A large part of learning the birds is the attempt to gain fluency in a new language. Bird words, I call ‘em. Memorable words like melanistic, pileated, accipiter, and axillar — none my spell-checker recognizes. These fine words permeate the bird books, meticulously staking out descriptive territory.      There’s intoxicating rhythm in the hyphenated phrases:            white-breasted            brown-crested            ladder-backed            dusky-capped (The list of these is long.)      Birders are people for whom subtle differences are carefully noted, and it’s important to get the lingo right. Colors are precise, with shades of tawny, bay, cinnamon, ivory, chestnut, and buff. I’m still figuring out the difference between ruddy and rufous, sooty and slatey, mottled and splotched.      Birds are chunky, dumpy, stubby, or stocky; richly spangled or semipalmated; chisel-billed or zebra-backed. Owls can be flammulated or ferruginous — other birds are gregarious, colonial, or cosmopolitan.      Body parts are carefully articulated: there are upperparts, underparts, and outerparts; primaries and secondaries; mandibles, scapulars, and speculum. Also rumps, flanks, cheeks, napes, throats, chins, and vents.      Birds are found wearing things. They wear medallions, masks, hoods, necklaces, bibs, and crowns; also mustaches, sideburns, whiskers, eye-rings, and spectacles. They sport ear-tufts, eye-stripes, wing patches, air-sacs, tail spots, and throat-collars.       There is bird-slang, although it’s sometimes buried in the literature: Hummingbirds are “hummers,” Empidonax flycatchers are “empids,” and Shrikes are “butcher birds.”      Proper names can be just as colorful. Consider the Magnificent Frigatebird, the Elegant Trogon, or the Solitary Sandpiper.      Names affect our perception of a bird despite ourselves. I’m still hoping to see a Blue-Footed Booby and a Chuck-Will’s-Widow, but I’m not so keen on the Lesser Scaup, the Sooty Tern, or the Parasitic Jaeger.      Careful attention is paid to a bird’s migratory status. There are residents, visitors, breeders, migrants, and vagrants. Some birds are abundant, others are casual, common, uncommon, accidental, or rare.      There are avian activities and proclivities, such as nomadism, albinism, dimorphism, and kleptoparasitism. Family life among birds includes monogamy, bigamy, and polygamy, as well as cooperative breeding, nest swapping, egg-dumping, and brood parasitism.      When you enter the world of sound, an evocative language takes shape. This may be where bird lovers outdo themselves in descriptive ecstasy.      Songs are described as:           bubbling, burbling, warbling, drawling;           nasal, sibilant, petulant, mournful;           harsh, hollow, guttural, ghostly;           plaintive, staccato, liquid, tremulous;           rolling, emphatic, ecstatic, vigorous! You could go on and on, if you wanted to. Bird books are full of passionate description. Finding an excuse to talk this way is reason enough to study birds!