THE 10 GREATEST BIRD NAMES OF ALL TIME 🧵 #10: Strange Weaver On first appearances no more odd than any of the other weavers. But they’re a real freak, once you get to know them. Found in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 9: #20 to #11 🧵 #20: Blood Pheasant We’re in the FINAL STRETCH and the birds names are going harder than is advisable. From the netherworld (or, the Himalayas, depending on who’s asking), and wears the blood of its enemies in its feathers.

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 8: #30 to #21 🧵 #30: Vampire Ground-Finch A species of Galapagos finch (ie, Darwin’s Finches) that evolved the taste for blood, which it sometimes drinks by pecking open the skin of Blue-footed Boobies.

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 7: #40 to #31 🧵 #40: Modest Tiger-Parrot Beautiful, not to mention accomplished, but won’t tell you about it. Females have gorgeous orange and black tiger-like barring on their chest.

On July 28, 1880, a woodcock flew into an auction store on 6th Avenue. They caught him, put him in a cage, and named him Dick. He got a NYT profile and crowds came to watch him. Dick was New York City's first celebrity woodcock. I told his story here: birdhistory.substack.com/p/the-tragic...

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 6: #50 to #41 🧵 #50: Squacco Heron Lots of birds are named after their call but none so persuasively as this one. If a bird squawks, shouldn’t it be called Squacco?

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 5: #60 to #51 🧵 #60: Growling Riflebird Its black velvety plumage supposedly resembles the uniform of the 19th century British Army Rifle Brigade. Plus, it growls.

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 4: #70 to #61 🧵 #70: Chaco Chachalaca Say this bird's name out loud. You're already happier than you were 8 seconds ago. Chachalaca comes from the Nahuatl word for “to chatter”. eBird transcribes their song as “bink, ka chee chaw raw taw.”

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 3: #80 to #71 🧵 #80: Cinderella Waxbill 293 birds are “grey”, 32 are “ashy”, and 16 are “cinereous,” which all could have worked for this bird, but some ornithologist with joy in their heart called it Cinderella instead.

Tiny Hawk, Pro Skater

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 2: #90 to #81 🧵 #90: Weebill Everything's little about Australia's littlest bird but its bill is littlest of all. It's song even sounds like it's saying "I'm a wee-bill." Decently cute bird but impossibly cute name. How could I say no?

100 Greatest Bird Names, Day 1: #100 to #91 🧵 #100: Chad Firefinch This is no Virginia Rail. Cockiest bird in Central Africa. Even though it's #100, the selection process was still incredibly competitive. This bird is still in the top 1% of all bird names.

There are more than 11,000 kinds of birds. I evaluated them all and made a definitive list of the 100 greatest names. I consider myself a bird name connoisseur but these blew me away. Over the next 10 days I'll add them to this thread. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Love a bird that tells you exactly who it is

One thing I love about new york is that its most important birds get obituaries

If you thought people got excited about woodcocks today, the things sportsmen said about them a hundred years ago would make you blush

Maybe you just learned about woodcocks, but they've been a big deal for centuries. I wrote about the long history of loving the American Woodcock birdhistory.substack.com/p/more-than-...

i found this florida woman who was feeding a sandhill crane Grape-Nuts in 1913 and I'm not sure what to do with this info but I'm kind of floored "his favorite food is grape-nuts" okay! go off!

huh

Eighty percent of the time I get excited about hearing a bird song I don't recognize it's actually a catbird. I love this description from Florence Merriam, 1889.

saw an opportunity and i took it

what can i get started for ya

Seeking: books on gilded age / progressive era social movements. Any recommendations??

A hundred years ago this is what people were thinking about when there was a blizzard birdhistory.substack.com/p/charity-to...

here's 36 names that people used to call the Northern Flicker. personal favorites include yucker and tapping-bird

Federal Holiday for bird migration is a great idea.

Wat

corset-burning: quite hardcore? Also, corsets: made from whale bones??

I had a conversation with my friend Grant Mulligan at Progress Accumulation about the role birds have played in America’s history, not just for the birders and ornithologists, but for everyone who’s called America home. Give it a listen! substack.com/home/post/p-...

I read a passage about street urchins (c. 1886) and thought "we really don't talk about street urchins any more" but google suggests we're actually talking about them more than ever. Any theories?

Obsessed with this journal for publishing caricatures of “prominent ornithologists,” which no academic today is brave enough to do

Really interesting article on the intersection of reconstruction-era politics, Mardi Gras, and birds

Ornithology X Mardi Gras X Art history thread — highly recommended

I’ve been researching birds in American history for the last four years and the richest and also most disturbing pictures I’ve found were Carnival float designs from 1873, whose theme was The World of Audubon 🧵

the most important question of presidents day is what did they think about birds and luckily for you chumps i've got answers birdhistory.substack.com/p/our-birdy-...

positive masculinity

before they give you your ornithologist badge and gun they make you put your hand on a sibley guide and swear this oath

putting this up in my room like a movie poster

not the American Ornithologists' Union negging the turkey vulture

It's kind of comforting to read how America's very serious ornithological journal regularly reported on a gull named Dick that visited a lighthouse in Massachusetts every year for 23 years in the late 1800s. The lighthouse keeper always gave him a hearty breakfast 🥲

my poem on this topic www.bu.edu/236magazine/...

Today I learned that woodchucks get their name neither from wood nor from chucking but from the Algonquian word from the animal, "wuchak."

California quail in Chile? Canada geese in France? We hear a lot about foreign birds naturalized in the US, but it turns out American birds have been widely introduced abroad. I couldn't find anyone who'd compiled a list before, so I put together one myself. birdhistory.substack.com/p/were-not-s...

Spare a thought for museum curators in the 1780s who could not get visitors to stop touching taxidermied birds that were covered in arsenic

Today is supposedly #NationalBirdDay but I'm calling BS. The first Bird Day was actually celebrated on May 4, 1894 in Oil City, PA and led to a decades-long movement of celebrating birds in schools. The Jan 5 version is less than a shadow of what they did 100 years ago🧵

Best things I read this year

Birds are all just little guys

This is what a billion passenger pigeons could do to a forest:

If your man doesn't treat you like a white-breasted nuthatch, LEAVE HIM