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Hi John,
A fair question. Sadly a rather simple answer (I
hope). Sea-eagles are very close to eagles and thus I guess the decision was
made that they should retain the name, even though modified. (Funny, there
it seems right to type Sea-eagles rather than Sea-Eagles because it is the
general sense not as a formal name. Eagles, kites, buzzards, old world vultures,
harriers, etc are members of the same order and the same family, these groups
are separated at sub family taxon, sea-eagles and eagles are about as close as a
fox and a dog. The difference between sea-eagles and eagles are really pretty
small (feathered feet or not, a tendency towards the marine or aquatic hunting
environment or not, mostly brown or mostly with large white parts in adult
plumage and other dividing points so minor they are barely noticeable). So big
kite or little kite or eagle are not that different.
Button-quails and quails are very different, they
are not in the same family or even order. They are about as close as are horses
and dolphins. Certainly button-quails and quails are more different in their
mating habits than are horses and dolphins (or indeed just about any two mammals
you could think about). But then the mating habits of birds are vastly more
varied and interesting than mammals. I have previously written on this line
about the poor Canberra aviculturist that I came across in about 1972 who was
hoping to breed from a pair of "Painted Quails" he had bought (or tricked into
buying as a pair, until I pointed out to him that they were one Stubble Quail
& one Painted Button-quail and members of two different orders of birds with
opposite mating habits. I think they also happened to be 2 females but that is
hardly relevant.
Not wanting to go too deeply into word use because
of course Cuckoo-shrikes and Shrike-tits are neither of these things. They and
probably many others like that are just stupid names that got established from
who knows where, mainly because the Eurocentric early namers just recycled old
words when confronted with new birds and weren't bold enough to invent something
completely new and unconfusing like "Gronk", "Splamm" or
"Squaggle".
Philip
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