{"id":8417,"date":"2014-03-03T04:14:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T11:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=8417"},"modified":"2014-03-02T15:35:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T22:35:40","slug":"whats-so-rough-about-a-rabbits-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/03\/whats-so-rough-about-a-rabbits-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s So Rough About a Rabbit’s Foot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rough-legged<\/a><\/p>\n

This was the sight that greeted me yesterday noon as I pulled in to DeKorte Park in the Meadowlands.\u00a0Rough-legged Hawks\u00a0<\/strong>aren’t exactly rare here in northern New Jersey, but these tiny-billed visitors from the Arctic are always exciting — and I think I’ve seen more\u00a0Snowy Owls\u00a0<\/strong>this winter in the state than members of this species.<\/p>\n

Whenever you pause to admire a rough-leg, of course, you also have to smile at the bird’s scientific name,\u00a0Buteo lagopus<\/em>, the “bunny-footed buzzard.” Erik Pontoppidan, the original Great Dane himself, named the bird 250 years ago, following in the tradition of Linnaeus’s name for the ptarmigans and anticipating Pallas’s for the Common House-Martin<\/strong>. Though the\u00a0Danske atlas\u00a0<\/em>is not available on line (tsk tsk),\u00a0I assume that all three scientists were thinking of the birds’ feathered tarsi, which recall, to the eye and to the touch, the furry hind limbs of a hare.<\/p>\n

It all makes very good sense. But why do we English-speakers call this bird Rough-legged\u00a0<\/strong>rather than “fuzzy-footed”? Are rabbits’ feet really that abrasive?<\/p>\n

It turns out that I just don’t know the word “rough” very well. Our friends at the OED remind me that in special application to animal integument, the word has — like its German cognate “rauh” — long had the sense of “thick” or “bushy” or “fluffy,” without necessarily connoting any sort of harshness. Animals — birds, horses, dogs, even bats and turtles — are “rough-legged” or “rough-footed” simply by virtue of having feathers or fur or conspicuously keeled scales on the extremities. “Rough-legged,” in other words,\u00a0means\u00a0<\/em>“fuzzy-footed,” or even “soft-footed.”<\/p>\n

Now don’t tell that to a vole or mouse, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the sight that greeted me yesterday noon as I pulled in to DeKorte Park in the Meadowlands.\u00a0Rough-legged Hawks\u00a0aren’t exactly rare here in northern New Jersey, but these tiny-billed visitors from the Arctic are always exciting — and I think I’ve seen more\u00a0Snowy Owls\u00a0this winter in the state than members of this species. Whenever … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “What’s So Rough About a Rabbit’s Foot?”<\/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":[63,36,52,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417"}],"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=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8420,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions\/8420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}