HOW BIRDS ARE NAMED, 



IF we were asked to find names for all the many hundreds 

 of different species of birds that live in this country, we should 

 understand better than we can now how hard it is to invent 

 appropriate names. Some we would naturally name from their 

 actions, as woodpeckers, creepers, divers, and humming-birds. 

 To some we would give good old names that have no meaning 

 to us now, but that have come over the ocean with our ancestors, 

 as ducks, thrushes, snipe, grebes, and gulls. Some good names 

 are suggested by the calls and songs of birds, as whippoorwill, 

 bobolink, towhee, phoebe, pewee, and cuckoo. Others are gay- 

 colored, and we readily select their color as their most strik- 

 ing peculiarity and call them bluebirds, redbirds, yellowbirds, 

 or blackbirds. But still there are more birds than names for 

 us to give them. 



We see that it is not a simple task to name all the birds of 

 a country, much less all those of the world. But the scientist, 

 who must first of all be exact in all he does, must have a differ- 

 ent name for each bird. So he selects the best of the popular 

 names, and by adding descriptive words, as red-headed wood- 

 pecker, black-backed gull, ring-necked duck, he makes a com- 

 pound name that will describe the bird ; or he names it from 

 the place it lives in, as Californian cuckoo, Carolina chickadee, 

 Arizona sparrow. 



There is still a great difficulty. Many times the same name 

 is applied to.very different birds in various parts of the coun- 

 try. What is a partridge? The New Englander says it is 

 the ruffed grouse ; the Virginian says tliat the ruffed grouse 



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