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Sunday 22 March 2015

Sunday Rest: pratincole.

Pratincoles do tend to frown a bit:

Glareola maldivarum - Beung Borapet.jpg

but wouldn't you, if you'd been given the name pratincole?

Word Not To Use Today: pratincole. This word comes from pratincola, a word coined by the German naturalist Wilhelm Heinrich Kramer. It comes from the Latin words prātum, meadow, and incola, resident.

The name is particularly unfair because pratincoles are not only, technically, waders, but they catch their food on the wing. 

To be fair, they nest on the ground: so they do at least spend their childhoods in meadows.




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