Spot the frippet: mopoke.

If anyone had ever asked me (and luckily no one ever has), I would have said that a mopoke is a donkey.

Goodness knows what mental connections would have led to that conclusion, perhaps a confused conflation of slowpoke and mosey - but in any case I would, as so often, have been quite, quite wrong.

This is a mopoke:



Now, before you start spluttering stuff about owls being difficult to spot because they only come out at night, and that in any case you only get mopokes in Australia and New Zealand which makes it jolly hard for the rest of us, firstly may I say that some owls do come out in the daytime; and, secondly, that I'm pretty sure there is a mopoke or two near you.

For a mopoke is not only an owl (Ninox novaseelandiae, though people often call Podargus strogoides:


photo by Andrew Beeston from Australia

a mopoke, too) but also a slow and lugubrious person. Someone, in other words, who enjoys being miserable so much that they seldom rush the experience.

I bet it won't take you more than half an hour to spot one of those.

Spot the frippet: mopoke. This word was coined in the 1990s and imitates the birds' call. Mind you, it has over twenty names, including morepork, ruru and boobook, so it probably isn't a very good imitation of the birds' call.