a tangent to the rainbird

["roger curnow" <>]

Quoting again.

 

"What Bird Is That" (Cayley) has Piping Crow-shrike for Black-backed Magpie.

 

"The Oxford English Dictionary " has Piping:  In names of particular kinds of birds or other animals having a piping note or cry: as piping crow, the Australian genus Gymnorhina...............

1845 Voy. to Port Philip, etc. 53 The warbling melops and the piping crow.
1895 C. Dixon in Fortn. Rev. Apr. 643 The Gymnorhinæ or piping crows of Australia.

 

The Australian National Dictionary (Oxford) has

piping crow. Magpie n.1 a. Also piping crow-shrike, piping shrike.

 

        roger curnow

-----

From:

To:

Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 8:44 PM

Subject: RE: [canberrabirds]a tangent to the rainbird

If you will permit a tangential thought.   I had thought the "shrike" was a magpie, and the South Australian "piping shrike" was a magpie ....was it in fact intended to be a butcher-bird?

 

Murray Delahoy

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: roger curnow [
Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 6:12 PM
To: COG
Subject: [canberrabirds] rainbird

The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd Ed.) offers

In Australia: (see quots.).

1860 G. Bennett Gather. of Naturalist 283 The Australian Shrike or Butcher-bird, also called Rain-bird by the colonists (Vanga destructor).
1898 Morris Austral Eng. s.v., The rain-bird of Queensland and the interior is the great Cuckoo or Channel-bill.

        roger curnow