Newsgroups: rec.birds
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!news.cs.indiana.edu!ariel.unm.edu!unmvax!nmt.edu!john
From: john@nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Subject: Re: Trendy species nicnames
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.072514.24289@nmt.edu>
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
References: <1991Apr15.004109.8828@crl.dec.com>
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 07:25:14 GMT

Maurice Herlihy (herlihy@crl.dec.com) writes:
+--
| tee vee		Turkey Vulture
+--
I've heard lots of birders use this, it's probably universal.

+--
| modo		Mourning Dove
+--
This comes from the 4-letter name code used by banders.  I've heard
several other 4-letter codes pronounced and used as nicknames at
Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO).

My favorite cute bird nicknames are a couple I remember from a list
posted on the wall of a house in Bolinas, CA where a couple of PRBO
ornithologists lived.  A non-birding woman who had lived there for a
while had put it up.  She was too much of a free spirit to learn the
right names, so she made up her own.  A couple of them were so
apropos that I remember them fifteen years later:

  "Tippy Glider"          (turkey vulture)
  "Angel Hawk"            (black-shouldered kite)
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, NM/john@jupiter.nmt.edu
``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.''  --Dave Farber