When I first contrived this silly little project in 2016,
I sat down and painstakingly compiled a list of all the one-word-birds in the
world. At the time there were 145.
To assemble this exclusive list I needed some
criteria. The first is obvious: each
bird’s common (non-scientific) name must consist of one, single word. Hyphenated names need not apply. This may seem sufficient qualification, but
it was also important to designate an authority from which to reference these
common names. In the birding realm, the
accepted authority on names is the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World1.
The reason this is important is that common names for
birds are variable, meaning that the same bird may be called different things
in different places, or by different people.
I will deal with the problems this creates in a later post, but suffice
it to say that a standard was required and Clements is that standard.
So with this decided I pored through the roughly 10,500
species in the checklist and picked out those rare beasts with those special
names. I collected them in a
neatly-organized spreadsheet and began to plot the pieces I would write, and
the angles each would use. Then I forgot
about the project for a year.
The thing about Clements is that every year it is updated
to reflect changes in our knowledge of bird taxonomy, and occasionally to
acquiesce to the whinings of nerdier bird-nerds than myself. So when I revived OneWordBirds in 2017, I
thought it a useful and prudent exercise to review the most current list and
ensure that nothing had changed. But
everything had changed.
Ok, so I’m being a bit melodramatic. About 140 species had actually stayed the
same. Several species were lost from the
list, mostly falling victim to species splits.
This means that what previously seemed to be a single species (like Silktail,
for example) was discovered to be two distinct species (like Taveuni Silktail
and Natewa Silktail) and renamed accordingly.
To my delight however, a few species were also gained due to spelling
changes. You can look forward to
Secretarybird (formerly Secretary-bird) making an appearance on this blog at a
future date.
There was one bird, however, whose removal from the 2017
list struck me like an arrow in the chest.
A bird so singular and so large in my mind that its absence made me
question this entire endeavour. A bird
that is as bizarre as it is beautiful: the formidable Lammergeier.
Or, since it’s 2017 now, the Bearded Vulture.
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| I can't even look at it without shedding a tear... |
Daggers. And what
justification did Clements give for the elimination of one of the most powerful
and enigmatic names in the entire bird world?
Five simple words: “to conform to prevailing usage.”
I would love to know with whom they spoke to determine
the “prevailing usage,” because it most certainly was not me. And I would love to know what self-respecting
birdwatcher, when presented with the choice, would elect to refer to this
magnificent creature as Bearded Vulture instead of Lammergeier. I would love to
meet that person, if only to swat them with a rolled-up newspaper and demand
they look at what they’ve done.
Now I realize that to many people, this may seem like a
mild overreaction. I understand (or at
least I try to) that most human beings believe they have more important things
to concern themselves with than what we call this bird or that bird. I will even concede that there may be more
egregious injustices in the world at this very moment. But for me, right now, sitting alone in my
apartment half-buzzed on cheap whiskey, this is the battle I choose to fight.
If you will permit me a moment, I will explain to you why
this incomparable bird deserves its mononym beyond a shadow of a doubt. But first, in the interest of full
disclosure, I must confess that the name Bearded Vulture actually makes more
sense than Lammergeier.
Firstly, it’s true that the bird is a vulture, albeit a
sort of distant-cousin, black-sheep member of the family. Secondly, unlike other vultures it has a
fully-feathered head, complete with bristle-like feathers which form a sort of
beard-facsimile on the bird’s chin. Ergo
Bearded Vulture does have a certain air of logic about it. Lammergeier,
on the other hand, means something like “lamb-vulture” or “lamb-hawk” in German,
and stems from the belief that the bird attacks lambs, which it does not.
What Lammergeier lacks
in accuracy though, it more than makes up for in mystique. To the uninitiated, the name Lammergeier conjures all manner of
possibility. It sounds almost mythical,
like some demon beast of lore who steals souls or haunts castles. It ignites the candle of your imagination in
a way that Bearded Vulture never could, and whether the bird itself is as you first
imagine it or not, it certainly does not disappoint.
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| How is this even a thing? |
The Lammergeier
is big, to start, standing nearly four feet tall and with a wingspan
approaching ten. Its breast, neck, belly
and legs are clad in shaggy, rust-coloured feathers, starkly contrasting with
its dark wings. Its head is white, but
punctuated by a black slash on either side, concealing yellow eyes ringed with
red. A wispy beard covers the base of a deeply-curved
beak. It is almost unreal to look at,
and your brain struggles to reconcile it with reality. But as bonkers as it looks, the real magic of
the Lammergeier is what it eats:
bones.
The Lammergeier
is unique among birds, in that its diet consists of up to 90% bone, which it
scavenges from dead animals. Its strong
stomach can digest startlingly large bone fragments to access the nutritious
marrow inside, but if a bone is too big to swallow, the Lammergeier uses a special trick.
Grasping the bone in its talons, the bird lifts it high into the sky,
then drops it with great precision onto a rock below, shattering it into
manageable pieces2. In a very
un-vulturelike fashion, the Lammergeier will
even occasionally use this method to kill live prey, including tortoises and
small mammals.
Sadly, like many vultures, this incredible bird may be
disappearing3. In the
European, African and Asian mountain ranges where it lives, it has been
historically persecuted due to the erroneous belief that it may hunt children
or domestic animals. Presently it is
threatened by habitat degradation, contaminated livestock carcasses, and
poisons used to kill livestock predators.
Conservation efforts are underway and there is hope for the Lammergeier, but it is far from out of
the woods4.
It seems to me that, like the Lammergeier, the one-word-bird is a dwindling phenomenon. Of the 145 that existed in 2016, only 143 now
remain. As our knowledge of taxonomy
grows and we continue to split and rename species to fit this new
understanding, that number will only get smaller. And if a bird as dramatic and spectacular as
the Lammergeier can’t hold its
moniker against “prevailing usage,” what hope is there for the others?
Conserving names may be less important than conserving
the species itself, but I believe it has value too. If we want people to take an interest in
nature and conservation, we need to grab their attention and engage their
imagination. Names like Lammergeier can do that. So I urge you, fellow bird-nerds, when
confronted with the choice, hang on to these rare, special names against the
tide of prevailing usage. Future
generations will thank you.
Photos:
Above: By Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2888498
Below: By Norbert Potensky - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2593958
