{"id":10158,"date":"2015-07-09T03:31:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T10:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=10158"},"modified":"2015-07-08T08:03:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T15:03:17","slug":"poor-pompadour-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/09\/poor-pompadour-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Pompadour, 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

But at least she has those two beautiful birds named in her honor, right?<\/p>\n

Well, not exactly.<\/p>\n

The dazzling\u00a0pompadour green pigeons<\/strong>, now considered a complex of half a dozen similar and closely related species, were\u00a0named in 1776 by the English naturalist and painter Peter Brown.<\/p>\n

\"Brown,<\/a><\/p>\n

Why would an Englishman name a Sri Lankan pigeon for a French courtesan, dead these dozen years? He didn’t.<\/p>\n

Brown’s description<\/a> is quite clear: the bird’s name memorializes not the late Marquise, but the shade of the wing coverts, “a fine pompadour color.” True, the color was named for Louis XV’s mistress, but the bird, alas, not.<\/p>\n

If the pigeon is attractive, the pompadour cotinga\u00a0<\/strong>is spectacular.<\/p>\n

\"Edwards,<\/a><\/p>\n

Both sexes of this species<\/a> were\u00a0represented in French\u00a0collections<\/a> during Mme de Pompadour’s lifetime, but it was known only by the relatively dull descriptive name “cotinga pourpre,” the purple cotinga.<\/p>\n

In the year of the Frenchwoman’s\u00a0death, Peter Simon Pallas gave the species a\u00a0Linnaean name,\u00a0Turdus puniceus<\/a><\/em>, simply a translation of the Brissonian name. But\u00a0that same year, 1764, George Edwards renamed it in his Gleanings<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Edwards had acquired his specimen in an extraordinary way. Post-Captain Washington Shirley<\/a> of the British navy, soon to be named Earl Ferrers and eventually made a\u00a0vice-admiral, captured a French ship — and found among the prize cargo a “curi0us parcel of Birds” said to be addressed to Mme de Pompadour herself. Edwards was given access to the specimens, at least two of which he described. This one<\/p>\n

being a Bird of excessive beauty, I hope that Lady will forgive me for calling it by her name,<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“The Pompadour.”<\/p>\n

I do not know whether she ever saw Edwards’s portrait of the bird or read the slightly\u00a0back-handed compliment in his description. If she did, I suspect she might rather have had her bird skins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But at least she has those two beautiful birds named in her honor, right? Well, not exactly. The dazzling\u00a0pompadour green pigeons, now considered a complex of half a dozen similar and closely related species, were\u00a0named in 1776 by the English naturalist and painter Peter Brown. Why would an Englishman name a Sri Lankan pigeon for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Poor Pompadour, 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10162,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10158\/revisions\/10162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}