Hi Laurie and Aus-birders
It is really not that suprising that many Australian birds were named that way.
They were all "new to science", and the only experience these collectors
would have was from Europe, and possible Africa or India. We all do the same
thing when we see a new bird - describe it by comparing size, colouration, jizz
to common birds that everyone knows.
I am sure that exaclty the same thing happened in Africa and Asia, but as these
bird families were, in the main part, related and not segregated like
Australian Secies, they pretty much got it right. (and any passerine they
couldn't place got called a Babbler!!)
Undoubtedly there would have been aboriginal names for birds - like the Maori
names for birds in New Zealand. Maybe we should use those??
cheers
Tony
Tony Crittenden
www.tcphotos.net
tcphotosdotnet.blogspot.com
Adelaide
South Australia
> From:
> To:
> Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 17:03:34 +1000
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Are Australian bird names a colonial hangover?
>
> There seem to be relatively few groups of birds that predominantly
> occur in Australia that don't have names based on unrelated English
> analogues - robins, quail-thrush, shrike-thrush, wrens etc. Some of
> the exceptions would probably be honeyeaters, butcherbirds, currawongs.
>
> How many species in Australia are named after non-English analogues?
> That is, named after species that don't occur in England. Cockatiel
> is probably one.
>
> I think that the official common names reflect that fact that the
> people who named them in the nineteenth century were either English or
> English colonials. In contrast, the English names of the bird species
> in Peru are rarely based on European analogues. Like honeyaters,
> names actually describe the group of birds rather than comparing them
> to analogues.
>
> The Brush Turkey is a classic example of English mislabelling. Not
> only is it totally unrelated to European Turkeys, it's name is
> disconnected from the other megapodes. If it were correctly labelled,
> it would be some sort of Bushfowl (in line with Scrubfowl and
> Malleefowl).
>
> Regards, Laurie.
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