Oh Canada

[Martin Butterfield <>]

An interesting read, especially about naming conventions!  

I was also interested to see the comment 

“We have an animal symbol, which is the beaver,” he said by way of analogy. “I would say that most Canadians don’t see a beaver in a given year. "  

Presumably that's because the people in Toronto don't see them.   We lived in Ottawa for a year, and beavers were common there, to the extent that City workers used dynamite to clear beaver dams built across suburban creeks so that they didn't cause floods in the Spring thaw.

I wondered why they didn't select an endemic bird, to which the simple answer is they don't really have one.  Dr Google offered a list of three species:

• Labrador Duck (extinct)
  
• Ross's Goose (overwinters in US so IMHO not really endemic); and
  
• Harris's Sparrow(ibid).
  

Martin

Martin Butterfield

http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/

On 8 December 2016 at 16:12, Bill Hall <> wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/world/canada/canada-national-bird-gray-jay.html?_r=0