Latin for Bird Lovers

Now that I want to learn all of my local birds not only by their common names but also their Genus species, I have been a little frustrated that the bird books and field guides from my youth don’t match up - and I'm not that old! Thus I have to turn to up-to-date sources, this being one.

This book is not meant for a black-and-white e-reader; the beautiful color illustrations by various artists add so much. Without the pictures, the names of unfamiliar birds mean little, despite the comprehensive descriptions. Most of the text is not in the traditional sense, just a short blurb that reads like a dictionary. It should be noted that each entry is listed like a proper noun, both genera and species. The more interesting of these are from the names of people or places, or a specific behavior of a bird, rather than just outward physical appearance.

Sprinkled throughout the book are longer and quite readable boxes detailing specific genera or bird biology factoids, as well as brief biographies of ornithologists. Among these are John Gould, a contemporary of Darwin, and David Lambert Lack, who further brought the evolution of “Darwin’s Finches” to light.  Or Phoebe Snetsinger, one of only eight birdwatchers ever to see more than 8,000 of the ~10,000 birds worldwide (~8,400 for her), who started late in life and endured much more than strenuous travel. Many were illustrators (Louis Agassiz Fuertes) and museum curators (an instance where use of that word is acceptable), or both (Phillip Clancey). Between the individuals included, they covered most of the earth's territory in bird study. Alexander Wilson was pre-Audubon, but an interesting encounter of the two is told here. Wilson was from Scotland but pioneered American ornithology and literally wrote the book on it. Though not a quantitative scientist, Alexander F. Skutch focused on Cental America, and could recognize individual birds, studying them that way. Each added to the collective understanding of birds, whether through population studies (Margaret Morse Nice) or conservation (Christian Jouanin); even the original James Bond! Not without controversy, Konrad Lorenz appears, the Nobel laureate who studied imprinting and other animal behavior, and who was also a Nazi.

This is a reference book, so it is easier to skip over the Latin and read the descriptions. It can be fun to guess the meaning first, and check how you did. Many of the pronunciations are not what I expected, but a lot of the words are just tricky, yet can be facilitated with practice. You can even make up your own memory device: “an ostrich (Struthio camelus) is like a sparrow the size of a camel,” for example. Many misleading names are out there, and this book helps to clear things up. The title of the book is itself a little inaccurate; many of the roots are Greek or ‘Latinized’ Greek. However, the scientific names given to taxonomic groups are all kind of Latinized, to be more universal. For example, adding –ii to the end of a word implies possession by said word. The authors admit that this isn’t complete, and some names will likely be disputed forever, but this is a great book to check out. Perhaps there is a niche out there for “Latin for Fish (or Reptile, Amphibian, Mammal, etc.) Lovers,” too?