G'day Greg,
You will find that the Bible, in the form of Shorebirds, refers to the
birds in question as Bush Thick-knees, as I suspect, does the The
Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. If you have a look at
http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Shorebirds.html that there are a group of
other species that also rejoice in the moniker of Thick-knee - the:
Senegal Thick-knee (Burhinus senegalensis) Range: central Africa
Double-striped Thick-knee (Burhinus bistriatus) Range: C America,
Northern S America, Caribbean
Peruvian Thick-knee (Burhinus superciliaris) Range: coastal Peru, S
America
Great Thick-knee Esacus (Burhinus recurvirostris) Range: India, Malaysia
Beach Thick-knee Esacus (Burhinus magnirostris) Range: from southern
Malaysia through Australia.
You have to admit that the group in birds look nothing like curlews,
and I don't think they have any special affinity for stones, so I don't
know why they should be saddled with the name Stone-Curlew. If they
weren't part of an international complex, I would have thought the name
weeloo would have been more appropriate.
As for the night heron, I would think that rufous is more descriptive
than nankeen.
Regards, Laurie.
On Friday, April 6, 2007, at 04:53 PM, Greg wrote:
'Stone-curlew' is the 'official' common name ending for both species
in Christidis and Boles 1994. 'Rufous Night Heron is 'officially'
Nankeen Night Heron.
It is interesting that so many people have picked up on 'Thick-knee'
and 'Rufous Night Heron' as they were only ever proposed official
names as far as I am aware. Usually people fight for decades against
the new names.
I don't mind 'Rufous Night Heron' as it is more accurate but it was
rejected as people considered that 'Nankeen' had a more interesting
ring to it. Nankeen used to refer to a rufous colour but now refers to
a yellow colour. The Nankeen Kestrel was proposed to be called the
Australian Kestrel and this has stuck with some people too despite it
being retained as Nankeen Kestrel. I think that the problem arose
because a field guide was published at the time that these names were
being bandied about.
Anyway that is my understanding of what happened. Brain's trust
please correct me if I am wrong?
Greg Clancy
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