An avian delight: a rant.

Imagine...

...you're a scientist who has loved birds all your life. You've trekked for weeks through the forests of Columbia (or Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru or Venezuela, I'm not sure which) and found the forest to be fascinating, full of life, but sadly full of life just-behind-a-branch, or life in-such-deep-shadow-you-can't-really-see-it.

And then, into a patch of softly filtered light, bounces a bird. It's a round finch-like thing, its breast the soft grey of the clouds and its back a robin's strong olive-brown, and the bird has one extraordinary feature: the lower half of its chunky beak, the mandibular rostrum, is a pale biscuit colour, quite different from the grey of the top half.

photo by Dominic Sherony https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12038680 

(sadly, this bird doesn't show the extraordinary bi-coloured beak)

A new species! Think of it: after all that trekking, all that searching, all that lifetime of fascination with birds, your dream has come true. You have discovered a new species of bird.

And now you have the honour of naming it.

And so what do you call it?

A dull-coloured grassquit.

Pah!

Word To Use Today: any name of a bird near you. I'll choose a grey wagtail, I think. In Old English the word grey was grǣg.