Someone from Belleville e-mailed me some time ago and pointed out an error that had managed to slip into one of the articles on my website. His only comment was, "Must have been quite a sight." He was referring to the double-crested cormorants that had somehow become "double-breasted" cormorants on this particular web page. It didn’t help much that the new species in question had been spotted on a cold ice flow in the Glenora Ferry channel.
This came only a few weeks after I made the very same typo in a bird report that went out to more than 1,800 subscribers on an automatic Internet listserv, and I spent several days fending off annoying e-mails from birders who were anxious to drive many miles to tick this one off on their winter checklists. One has to question where my mind was when I submitted these reports.
But no one is infallible. More than once, readers have phoned up to report pitpits, greebys, grawsbeaks, and vie-ree-os, meaning, of course, pipits, grebes, grosbeaks and vireos. One Toronto area author acquaintance of mine said someone left a message on his machine once, "Foot of Leslie Street. Two horny grebes and a piping plumber," meaning, of course, horned grebes and piping plovers.
When I first took an active interest in birding many years ago, like so many other newcomers to the ranks of the birdwatching fraternity, I had my share of problems with the correct pronunciation of some of their names. In a world of ferruginous hawks, prothonotary warblers, Sabine’s gulls, and red cockaded woodpeckers, it is quite understandable.
One acquaintance many years ago returned home to find a message near his telephone one day that read, simply, "Somebody called for you. Said something about a rare bird. Think he said his name was Red Fallerope," The red phalarope, of course, is a shorebird, not a person.
Actually one of the best places to find unusual bird names used to be in area newspapers. Reporters weren’t always that familiar with bird names and when reporting on bird counts and other similar events, mistakes in spelling often occurred, and sometimes they would be hilarious. Additionally, columnists used to submit their own material by mail, and some poor soul at the newspaper would be assigned to retype the strange assemblage of names, and errors here, too, would invariably crop up. Today, much of the material is sent in its original form by e-mail. The newspaper downloads it on to their computer, does a little fiddling around with the formatting, plops it into its appointed space on the newspaper page, all without typing or changing a word.
An account of birds seen on a Napanee bird count many years ago contained a number of species, new to the Ontario checklist. The local newspaper included in its written account after interviewing a birder, a number of black scooters (scoters). The birder was quoted as saying the bird was very rare (that’s because as scooters, they swim so fast that no one can see them!). There was a foreign bird, the horned greke (grebe), and a rather formidable creature, the "horn-headed cowbird" (brown-headed cowbird).
But nature club bulletins are not infallible either. The person responsible for typing one such bulletin about 25 years ago for the Belleville based Quinte Field Naturalists, obviously a non-birder - included the appearance of several "golden-brown knights." Although likely related to golden-crowned kinglets, they probably differed in that this new species was discovered either on the menu of a fast food outlet, or was a soldier on horseback who had been out in the sun too long. I often hear about brown "trashers" (thrashers), and not too long ago, I saw a report of a black-bearded three-toed woodpeckers (supposed to be black-backed) , and a pleated (pileated) woodpecker. I am wondering if the latter came with an inflatable throat patch?
"To err is human - to forgive divine."
