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Berghaan
(Mountain cock)
Berghaan is the name given to some of the larger Eagles,
and especially to the beautiful Bateleur Eagle, Terathopius ecaudatus,
by the Dutch colonists in South Africa. The name has often been
adopted for this bird by English residents also (Layard, B. S. Africa,
pp.
11, 18).
Bernacle
Apparently the correct way before the dawn of the 20th century of spelling
the word now written, in accordance with its pronunciation, "Barnacle"
or "Barnicle." Its derivation is as puzzling to the etymologist as is to
the ornithologist the discovery of the breeding-grounds of the bird it
denominates. Dr. Murray, under the word "Barnacle" in the New Enqlish
Dictionary, gave as the oldest known English form the Bernekke (Latinized
Bernaca)
of
Giraldus Cambrensis about 1175 ; and states that the Cirriped (Le pas anatifera),
also
so-called, took its name from the Bird, a kind of GOOSE, and not the Bird
from the Cirriped.
Bilcock
Said to be a local English name for the Water-RAIL.
Bill
or Beak
Bird
Bird
of Paradise
Bird of
Prey
A phrase in common use, signifying any member of the Order Accipitres
of Linnaeus (the SHRIKES being generally excepted) or of the RAPTORES of
many later systematists.
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Bishop Bird
or Bishop Tanager
Latham's rendering (Gen. Synops.
ii. p. 226) of the French l'Eveque,
by
which name a species inhabiting Louisiana was, according to Dupratz (Hist.
de la Louisiane, ii. p.140), originally called, as stated by Buffon
(Hist. Nat. Ois. iv. p. 291). Dupratz's bird was probably
the Passerina cyanea of modern ornithology, the Indigo-bird or Indigo-Bunting
of the English in North America; but Buffon confused it with his Organiste
of
Santo Domingo - a very different species, while Brisson had already applied
the French name (l'Evesque,
as he wrote it) to a third species from
Brazil, which subsequently became the Tanagra episcopus of Linnaeus,
known as the Blue-Gray Tanager, and this seems to be the only one now known
(and that to few but "fanciers") as the "Bishop-Bird" or "Bishop-TANAGER"
- the colour of its plumage suggesting, as in the original case, the appellation.
Audubon, himself a Louisianian, makes no mention of the name "Bishop-Bird";
but said (B. Amer. iii. p. 96) that it was known to his countrymen
as the Petit Papebleu. He adds that the first settlers called
all the Buntings, Finches and "Orioles"
Papes.
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Bittern
Blackbird
The
Blackbird is the common, but not the most ancient, (Its earliest use seems
to be in the Book of St. Albans in 1486, where it occurs as "blacke
bride.") name of the OUSEL, the Turdus merula of Linnaeus
and most ornithologists (By some unhappy accident the order of these
words was reversed in Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary.
The bird
has been named Merula atra, but never Merula turdus
(as therein
stated) by Linnaeus or anyone else). The blackbird is one of the
best known of British birds; but since conferred in distant countries on
others whose only resemblance to the original bearer lies in their colour,
as in North America to several members of the Icteridae
(GRACKLE
and ICTERUS), in the West Indies to the species of Crotophaga
(Ani),
and perhaps to more in other lands. Occasionally too in translations of
Scandinavian works it is used to render
Svartfugl - the general
name for the Alcidae (Auk)
- of which indeed it is an equivalent, but its use in that capacity tends
to mistakes.
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