Borrowed Bird Names

I've been toying with the idea of this post - comparing the Australian birds whose names have been 'borrowed' from European birds with the 'originals' - for quite some time but without the illustrative material to do it. Our recent holiday in Ireland has finally given me the opportunity to take photos of some of these birds, so we can now see and compare the local species with those originals. For this post I have drawn heavily on the research for Australian Bird Names; origins and meanings, published by CSIRO and now in a revised second edition, which I co-wrote with my friend and colleague Jeannie Gray. 

I won't tell the stories of these origins in full here, as some are really quite convoluted, but the book's in libraries if you're interested. It's going to be primarily a photo essay with the abbreviated stories in the captions. Where possible I've used photos of both the species the name was based on, and the Australian species to which the name was probably originally applied, but sometimes that still hasn't been possible so I've used closely related and similar species to get the idea over. Often you'll find that quite a leap of the imagination is required to see what our forebears saw! Usually these names were applied by British colonists in the early days of the foreign settlement of Australia, mostly people with some familiarity with the British birds but with no knowledge or interest in actual relationships. Moreover they were often homesick and longing for some familiarity in  a very strange land. (They could of course have asked the people who'd had names for the birds for thousands of years but that wouldn't have occurred to most of them.)

We'll start with some obvious and straightforward ones, where a name was directly applied based on superficial similarities, and come back to some of them when more convoluted name combinations are involved.

Eurasian Magpie Pica pica, Dublin. This is a very common and conspicuous bird,
 a member of the crow family, found right across northern Europe and Asia.

Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen, Wagga Wagga. Yes it's large and conspicuously
black and while, but that's about it really! Its family Artamidae includes currawongs,
butcherbirds and woodswallows, of which all but the woodswallows are
confined to Australia and New Guinea.

European Robin Erithacus rubecula, Donegal, Ireland. This is a very engaging and
boldly curious little Old World flycatcher which would have been familiar to many of the colonists.

 

Flame Robin Petroica phoenicea, Namadgi National Park, ACT. It seems to me that
the name robin for Australian birds, which arose early in the Sydney colony,
could have been initially applied either to this species (especially in winter when it
came down from the mountains) or the Scarlet Robin, but most likely both.
In either case the resemblance again is pretty sketchy, and while there are pink,
yellow and black-and-white Australian robins, there are no orange ones.

Southern House Wren Troglodytes musculus, Chilean Patagonia. This is in the same
genus as the Eurasian Wren T. troglodytes, but I found the latter to be very difficult
to photograph. However this image is essentially what our forebears were thinking
of when they named the Australian 'wrens'.

Female Superb Fairywren Malurus cyaneus, National Botanic Gardens, Canberra
(where I think all the wrens have been banded by ANU students and other researchers).
Yet again the resemblance is vague - small, brown, cock-tailed and diving into bushes is
about it. And of course it entirely ignores the very colourful males in breeding season.
Nonetheless 'wren' was used from the very early days of the colony, initially for this
species, but it was later expanded to scrubwren, emuwren, grasswren, heathwren etc, for
more or less closely related groups. (The group name 'fairywren' was only coined
in the 20th century.)

Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, Great Saltee Island, Ireland.
This is another crow, one of just two members of the genus, mostly associated
with mountains or coastal cliffs, where they typically forage on nearby short
grassland, as this one was.

White-winged Choughs Corcorax melanorhamphos, in Canberra.
They are black and have a curved bill, but neither bill or legs are red, though
their eyes are, all in contrast to the original chough. They are in a uniquely
Australian family of just two species of mud nest builders (with the Apostlebird).
In this case most of the settlers wouldn't have been familiar with the European chough
which lived in pretty remote places; it was the scientists who named it and were
badly led astray by the superficial resemblance, even into the early 20th century.

Pied (or White) Wagtail Motacilla alba, Cork, Ireland. A familiar species across
a huge range covering Europe, all of Asia and some of North Africa. The family
Motacillidae includes wagtails and pipits, of which only one pipit species
is found in Australia. Significantly, in this context, the name Willy-wagtail
was apparently applied to it (according to the authoritative Australian National
Dictionary) but only on the Isle of Man and in Northern Ireland.

 

Willie Wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys (and two species of honeyeater) Gluepot Reserve,
South Australia. This is an odd and somewhat mysterious story about one of Australia's
most familiar and fondly regarded birds. The oldest record we can find for the name
is in a south-east Queensland newspaper in 1882, though earlier oral usage seems likely.
The Australian National Dictionary (see previous caption) asserts that the name
was transferred to our bird but doesn't explain the late arrival of the name.
However on balance it would seem a huge coincidence if there was no connection.

Welcome Swallows Hirundo neoxena, Canberra. This species is very similar to and
closely related to the Barn Swallow H. rustica, which would have been very familiar
to British settlers and found throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere. In fact
I suspect that most of them would have just referred to both species as 'the swallow'
without distinguishing them.

Dusky Woodswallow Artamus cyanopterus family near Canberra. The name Wood Swallow
was applied to it early in the days of the Sydney colony (allegedly because of its
habit of perching on tree stumps) and often just elided to 'swallow', being lumped in
with 'other' swallows until the end of the 19th century. This was based purely on its habit
of soaring and catching insects in the air, as do 'real' swallows'; as mentioned earlier
the woodswallows are in the same family as magpies, currawongs and butcherbirds.

Mixed flock of woodswallows hunting insects over the Gulf Country savannah
of tropical Queensland.

But things started to get a lot sillier as the essential unfamiliarity of most Australian birds overwhelmed people trying to fit them into familiar boxes. They often felt obliged to coin combined forms that were usually, quite frankly, weird. Here are some of these combinations that we still use today.

For instance if we put 'magpie' into a name (see previous photo) it implies black and white, but what other bird did someone blend with it?

Ideally I'd have used a photo of a Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis, which is the lark the
new colonists would have been thinking of, but I haven't quite managed one, so this
similar and related Spike-heeled Lark from northern South Africa Chersomanes albofasciata
will have to stand in. It hardly matters as neither would seem to have anything in common
with one of our commonest birds which now shares their name.

Magpie-lark Grallina cyanoleuca, Canberra. I can't ague with the black-and-white implication
(indeed I grew up in Adelaide calling them Murray Magpies, for the river, because their
mud nests require them to live near water). But a lark? Hardly, but the colonists
were using this name from the early days of Sydney. This one has always eluded me.
Larks are classically renowned for their song (eg Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending)
but while I love the stroppy Magpie-larks, it's not for their singing prowess!

The shrikes, family Laniidae, are a largely northern hemisphere family of small to medium predatory songbirds and while they are not naturally found in Australia, their name recurs in compound bird names here. Here the reference is to their strong straight hooked bill. The best illustrations I have of this are from true shrikes but which don't carry 'shrike' in their name, but the colonists were thinking of closely related birds in the same genus and with this bill when they scattered the name among the Australian birdscape.

Taita Fiscal Lanius dorsalis, Serengeti NP, Tanzania.

Well if a bird had such a bill and sang beautifully like other birds they'd known, why not call it a shrike-thrush? (Rhetorical question by the way.)

Song Thrush Turdus philomelos, a familiar and famed singer found across Europe,
western Asia and North Africa.

So we have the group name of some of our great songsters, the shrikethrushes. Unlike most of those we've looked at here so far, this was not a spontaneous 'folk' name, but a translation of the genus name coined by the collaborating ornithologists Nicholas Vigors (Irish) and Thomas Horsfield (US) in 1827.

Grey Shrikethrush Colluricincla harmonica, Canberra. I hope you know the call
(if not click on any of these) but the predatory hooked beak is clear here.

OK, what if it has (sort of) such a beak but is black and yellow? Is there a British contender for the 'shrike' name here? Of course there is if you're determined to find it.

Great Tits Parus major are actually not bright yellow, as this Irish one shows,
but the black, white and yellow pattern is distinctive, leading to...

... Eastern Shriketit Falcunculus frontatus, near Forbes, central western NSW.
This name appears to have been first applied by the hugely influential John Gould
in his 1848 7 volume Birds of Australia. He also commented on the similarity
of its foraging behaviour to that of the quite unrelated European tits.

And one more 'shrike'-based compound name, the cuckoo-shrikes. My European Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus photos are not usable, but the Australian Pallid Cuckoo Heteroscenes pallidus is a good 'body double' for it - indeed until fairly recently it was placed in the same genus. 

Pallid Cuckoo, Canberra.

Which together apparently make a cuckoo-shrike!

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Coracina novaehollandiae, north coast NSW.
Everything about this name is mysterious, though one may imagine the dipping flight to
resemble that of a Cuculus cuckoo, plus the hook-tipped shrike beak. However the name
appeared without any obvious prompting in the late 19th century (before that they were
mostly called caterpillar-eaters) and while the group is found throughout southern Africa,
south and south-eastern Asia and the west Pacific, there is circumstantial evidence
that the name arose in Australia. But that's all I've got, sorry!

Back to the thrush for a moment. It has unwittingly been complicit in another of the Great Mysteries of Australian bird names, along with another entirely unrelated bird group.

Brown Quail Synoicus ypsilophorus, north coast NSW. A common and widespread bird
in Australia and New Guinea, very similar to the Common Quail Coturnix coturnix of Europe,
Asia and Africa which many of the colonists would have known.

But put them together and you apparently get a quail-thrush - or at least the eminent and generally very sensible Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) committee tasked with preparing a final definitive list of Australian bird names in 1926 thought you did. Indeed they thought it was more appropriate than the hitherto prevailing 'ground-bird' name, though they didn't venture to explain themselves; I personally think that the port decanter was involved.

Female Spotted Quail-thrush Cinclosoma punctatum, Brindabella Ranges above Canberra.
OK, it lives mostly on the ground (like lots of other birds) and sort of sings - though sort of
not at all like any thrush that I know. Hmm.
The males tend to be more brightly coloured, not that that helps eitheer.

Male Copperback Quail-Thrush C. clarum, near Norseman, Western Australia.

And that's probably enough of these mind-twisting weird name inventions. But I'll finish with two  quite different bird name stories, both brought to the front of my mind in Ireland, which I think are worth mentioning. The first is a much more convincing use of a call than the thrush examples, to name an unrelated bird.

At one stage I stepped out of the car on the Atlantic coast and was immediately challenged by the unmistakable call [I'd suggest you listen to the 7th example, by Nick Talbot, if you're interested] of an Australian Bush Stone-curlew Burhinus grallarius.  

 

Bush Stone-curlew Darwin, Northern Territory.

Fortunately for my mental health I quickly remembered why our bird is so-called. In fact the group name arose in England, where another member of the genus lives (Eurasian Stone-curlew B. oedicnemus) in rocky drier habitats. And I'm getting to the point! Its wailing nocturnal call is remarkably similar to that of the Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata, a large shore wader with a very long down-curved bill, which of course was what I heard in Ireland. In Australia the Bush Stone-curlew is often referred to as simply 'the curlew'.

Far Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis in Cairns, tropical Queensland.
This species, which breeds in Siberia, is very similar to the Eurasian Curlew, and
with similar calls, but didn't influence the naming of the Australian stone-curlew. However it does
help us to envisage the 'model' for the original name.

And finally, and somewhat tangentially, another bird-derived name, though this time not applied to another bird.

This is a Rook Corvus frugilegus, a common Eurasian crow, here in Ireland.

And this is a Rook nesting colony...

... called, yep, a rookery.

But, for reasons uncertain the term came to be used for breeding colonies of seabirds in particular. So these birds, none at all crow-like, are among those which breed in rookeries!

Magellanic Penguins Spheniscus magellanicus, Strait of Magellan, Chilean Pagagonia.

Mixed seabirds, but mostly Guanay Cormorants Leucocarbo bougainvilliorum, Islas Ballasteras, Peru.

Northern Gannets Morus bassanus (part of a much larger colony), Great Saltee Island,
County Wexford, Ireland.

And that might be enough of such silliness, which says a lot more about us and our language than it does about the birds. I think it's interesting though, and it's an excuse to showcase some birds, which can never be a bad thing.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 26 JUNE

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