Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Bird Nicknames

My circle of birding friends has a ton of nicknames for birds. We use the common ones like "Sharpie" and "Coop" for Sharp-shinned Hawk and Cooper's Hawk. We have a few others too. When one of us is leading a group, its hard to not use the nicknames and confuse people. Here's a list of ones I can think of.

Big Cranky - Great Blue Heron (named for its call)
Yumper - Yellow-rumped Warbler
Greg - Great Egret (its banding code is GREG)
Ceg - Cattle Egret (similar to above, pronounced "Keg")
Sneg - Snowy Egret
Snorkeler - any loon
Biter - Great Black-backed Gull (a friend was bitten once while trying to free one from a fishing line)
Croaker - Common Raven
"Weetchie" - any tiny bird
Tailpumper - any bird that bobs its tail (Waterthrush, Spotted Sandpiper)

What nicknames do you have for birds?

1 comment:

palyaco said...

hi I'm subtitling a film where they call a sparrow hawk 'glass eyed' (literal translation) for his sharp bright sparkling eyes. do you have any nickname close to that?