{"id":9273,"date":"2014-10-01T15:09:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T22:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=9273"},"modified":"2014-10-01T15:10:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T22:10:42","slug":"little-bird-big-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/01\/little-bird-big-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Bird, Big Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Black-throated<\/a><\/p>\n

This charming black-throated green warbler — an adult female, I believe\u00a0— was busily picking nearly invisible bugs from Alison’s aster bed this morning.<\/p>\n

The species ultimately owes its long English name to none other than William Bartram, who listed it in the\u00a0<\/a>Travels<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>as<\/p>\n

P[arus] viridis gutture nigro, the green black throated flycatcher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In June 1756, the very young Bartram had sent skins of this species and of the black-and-white warbler from “the province of Pensilvania” to George Edwards<\/a>, who described and painted them in the\u00a0Gleanings<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>of 1760.<\/p>\n

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

Edwards called our bird\u00a0the black-throated green flycatcher, and it was his account that Gmelin<\/a> drew on to assign the species its formal Linnaean name,\u00a0Motacilla\u00a0<\/em>[later Sylvia<\/em>, then\u00a0Dendroica<\/em>,\u00a0now\u00a0Setophaga<\/em>]\u00a0virens.<\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, it seems that in the later eighteenth century there was resistance to the unwieldy English name adopted\u00a0by Edwards. In France, both Buffon<\/a> and Brisson<\/a> called this bird\u00a0simply “black-throated,” while across the Channel Pennant<\/a>, Turton<\/a>, and Latham<\/a>\u00a0all preferred to emphasize the color of the upperparts by calling it the “green warbler.”<\/p>\n

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

It was up to Alexander Wilson<\/a>, Bartram’s grateful friend, to restore his master’s English name, which he did in only imperfect\u00a0faithfulness to the original: the charming bird in the upper lefthand corner of Wilson’s plate 17 is labeled “Green black-throated Warbler,” as in Bartram, though his\u00a0text reads<\/a> — the first instance of the modern English name in print — “black-throated green warbler.”<\/p>\n

Audubon, who was the first to depict the female of the species, followed Edwards and Wilson’s letterpress in using the sequence “black-throated green” rather than the more logical “green black-throated”:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

And so it has remained ever since, a long name for a tiny bird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This charming black-throated green warbler — an adult female, I believe\u00a0— was busily picking nearly invisible bugs from Alison’s aster bed this morning. The species ultimately owes its long English name to none other than William Bartram, who listed it in the\u00a0Travels\u00a0as P[arus] viridis gutture nigro, the green black throated flycatcher. In June 1756, the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Little Bird, Big Name”<\/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":[63,36,1,52,64,2],"tags":[284,283,286,271,288,287,87,285,289,85,178],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273"}],"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=9273"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9282,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273\/revisions\/9282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}