The Naming of Birds

Many old stories tell of how the creatures of the world were named. Having a name may not be important to them, but to us it seems essential. There is a practical purpose for naming, but it also has the imaginative purpose of bringing the creature and the name giver into a bond that leads to care and keeping. A threatening universe is demystified and we take on the role of gardener.

The urge to have a name for a bird is very strong. Sometimes, when people call to describe a bird that is unusual to them, the marks they note are not the key ones that would distinguish the species from others. There are even times when a mark seems wrong for a species, but is only confusing because it wasn't the important one.

This was true of the red-headed woodpecker I talked about last week. The caller mentioned a white rump patch between the dark back and upper tail feathers. The flicker immediately came to mind because this is one of the quick ways to identify that species in flight. It turns out four members of the woodpecker family in eastern North America have that white rump patch. Besides these two, there is the yellow-bellied sapsucker and the red-bellied woodpecker. Birders notice the patch only on the flicker because the other three have other distinctive markings.

Plumage is not the only way to distinguish a species, and the more you watch birds, the more you use keys like habitat and various aspects of behavior such as posture, feeding, or flying. This way you can eliminate many species before you zero in on the likely suspects. In many ways identification is like a murder mystery and the detective's job is to separate the pertinent details from the inconsequential. That red head may be a red herring.

The red-headed woodpecker has a black back with white wing patches, which is very obvious on a flying bird and lacking in other woodpeckers, so that mark is essential. On the other hand almost all woodpeckers have some red on their head. The very common downy and hairy woodpeckers have an obvious red blotch on the back of the head - at least the males do. The huge crescent on the pileated woodpecker is bright red. The flicker has a red mark on the back of the head, the male yellow-bellied sapsucker has one on the forehead, and the red-bellied woodpecker has red on the fore and rear part of the head or just on the rear head, depending on whether it is a male or female.

So the name "red-headed woodpecker" for this species may not have been the best choice, especially when young birds all have a brown head. It becomes red as the bird molts during the winter into its first spring breeding plumage. The key is that the entire head is red, so the term "red-hooded" might have been more apt.

One name that is not much use for identification is "red-bellied woodpecker." Almost all bird names were decided upon by early naturalists, who examined a dead specimen in their hands after it had been collected (shot). The naturalist in this case noticed a blush of light red coloring on the breast, which no other woodpecker had, so red-bellied it was and is. I confess to being less interested in studying the subtleties of plumage than some people. To me it sometimes can be a case of overlooking the forest for the trees. One friend takes this to an extreme, boasting that he forgets what a bird looks like the minute it is out of sight and so gets a first-time thrill practically every time he sees any bird. It is not a bad approach, but most of us want to build up our knowledge and skill. Two of my particular interests are knowing the abundance of a species and when it moves.  After enjoying the beauty of a bird, I want to know how many there are around, as well as when it comes and goes. This is an intriguing story for the red-bellied woodpecker, which I will tell next week.