rising@utzoo.uucp (Jim Rising) (01/16/90)
For those of you interested in bird names, I highly recommend THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN BIRD NAMES by Ernest A. Choate, The Harvard Common Press, 535 Albany Street, Boston, MA 02118. I don't know if it's still in press, but it is a paperback and not expensive. I got mine from Buteo Books, P. O. Box 481, Vermillion, SD 57069, but one could write the publisher as well. It was interesting to note that descriptive vernacular names in different languages describe different characteristics of the birds (e.g., Red Godwit; Bar-tailed Godwit; Black-tailed Godwit). This is true of a couple of shorebirds in English: the British use the names Grey Phalarope and Grey Plover for what the Americans call the Red Phalarope and the Black-bellied Plover. In these cases, the British name the birds after their winter plumage (which is what they look like when in Britain) whereas the Americans names describe the breeding plumage. -- Name: Jim Rising Mail: Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1 UUCP: uunet!attcan!utzoo!rising BITNET: rising@zoo.utoronto.ca