A “facebook friend” of mine reports being e-chastised for her “failure” to use four- or six-letter codes in her reports:
The most negative one was how inexperienced as a birder I appeared. Then there was the one offering to ‘teach’ me the abbreviations since I obviously didn’t know them….
Charming.
I’ve been guilty over the years of letting an “AMGO” or a “MODO” or a “PISI” slip past my lips, but like most birders I know (and want to know), I make a very careful effort in the field to use the full, official, unambiguous names of the birds I see. It avoids confusion–who doesn’t remember Bill Oddie’s riff on “the red-throated“?–but more than that, and more importantly than that, abbreviations and cutesy nicknames create yet another barrier for the new birder, the beginning birder, and the casual birder.
It can be hard enough when you’re starting out to figure out what that fluffy-tailed little duck is without having people around you shouting “peebie-jeebie.” Save the endearments for the bedroom, and give the good people birding with you or near you the information they need to understand what you’re seeing and to learn more about it later when they sit down with a field guide.
Even if it’s a Middendorf’s Grasshopper Warbler, or a Southern Beardless Tyrannulet, or even a Northern Rough-winged Swallow. Please.
