Richard and others,
I have recently finished reading the same book, but for Christmas was
also given a copy of Kenn Kaufman's 'big year' book title Kingbird
Highway: the biggest year in the life of an extreme birder. Again, this
book is an excellent read, and an amazing story of his travels, a
majority of which were done by 'thumbing' a ride. Kenn uses capital
letters for bird names in his book and also gives an excellent
explanation why he chose to do so. My only trouble is, having read the
book I have already leant it to another so can't give you his reasons.
Once I have the book I will let you know what it says, unless in the
meantime someone else puts it on.
Cheers,
David Parker
Griffith, NSW
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Dr Richard
Nowotny
Sent: Monday, 31 December 2007 3:11 PM
To:
Subject: Publishing conventions re bird-names.
I'm currently reading Mark Obmascik's The Big Year [Free Press, 2004] (a
very enjoyable read, recommended to me by Jill Dening, which adds
considerably to one's understanding and enjoyment of the phenomenon of
the
big year [in this case in the US] - as recently recorded so
entertainingly
in this country by Sean Dooley). As I was reading of evening grosbeaks,
bald
eagles, short-eared owls, black-and-white warblers, etc it reminded me
of an
old question to which I realized I still don't know the answer: Why do
we
birders write 'Pied Butcherbird' (including in our field-guides and our
intra-disciplinary literature) while in main-stream books the convention
is
to write 'pied butcherbird' - without capitals? [And similarly for
singing
honeyeater, red kangaroo, hump-backed whale, etc.]
>From first principles one might think the following should apply:
A butcherbird is a type of bird of which there are a number of distinct
species.
A pied butcherbird (descriptive) is a butcherbird which has black and
white
colouring (which applies to a greater or lesser extent to 3 of our 4
butcherbirds).
A Pied Butcherbird is the distinct species Cracticus nigrogularis.
Writing 'I saw a pied butcherbird' seems to lack the same precision that
is
conveyed by 'I saw a Pied Butcherbird.' This becomes even more obvious
(and
potentially confusing) when one writes 'I saw a common tern.' Or 'I
heard a
singing honeyeater.'
Having hopefully established the issue to readers' satisfaction, my
question
to you all is:
Why is there a general publishing convention that common names of birds
(and
other animals) are not capitalized (with its associated loss of
precision)
and how did it come to be?
Richard NOWOTNY
Port Melbourne, Victoria
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