2008 - The Bearded Tit by Prefers to remain anonymous, Rory McGrath Page A

than I has transcribed the song as ‘chip chip chip chiri chiri chiri cheep tcheweeeoooo’. That may be quite accurate, but all I can say is that I’ve never succeeded in attracting a female chaffinch by singing it. The female chaffinch is, incidentally, a rather dull, buffy-brown version of the male, retaining the striking black and white of the wings. Fringilla coelebs means ‘bachelor finch’. Coelebsor more often caelebsis the root of the English word ‘celibate’. Yet, inexplicably, you invariably see chaffinches in pairs. Mr and Mrs Chaffinch always look like an advert for marital stability. Has some Victorian scientist cocked up here?
    ‘Give me another one.’ I’d run out of physical proximity manoeuvres. It was time to show off my revision.
    ‘Starling.’
    She was being kind to me.
    ‘ Sturnus vulgaris… which is, let’s face it, Latin for ‘common starling’.’
    ‘Robin.’
    ‘ Erithacus rubecula . That’s the first one you taught me. Here’s one for you. Eritkacus fidus?
    ‘Er…No idea. Don’t know what fidus is.’
    ‘‘ Fidus is dependable and loyal.’
    ‘Still don’t know.’
    ‘Reliant Robin.’
    ‘Oh I see. I didn’t realize the game had veered off down a puerile side road.’ She laughed affectionately and put her hand on mine.
    Did you hear that? She put her hand on mine!
    ‘ Anas platyrhyncbos ?’ she asked.
    ‘Well, I think Anas is a duck, so I’ll plump for mallard.’
    ‘Spot on.’
    I thought for a moment. ‘How about this? Anas lavatorius?
    ‘Toilet duck.’ She pulled a long-suffering parent face in my direction. ‘Oh, I think I’ve just found your level now. What’s thrush?’
    ‘ Candida albicans .’
    She laughed and put her hand over her mouth with mock modesty. She was giggling and relaxed now. I think she likes me.
    I finished with Aquila slapheadii (bald eagle) and she had to go back to work.
    I was helpless. This girl is the best, I thought.
    The absolute tops.
    Or, to use the scientific binomial, the Testiculi canis .

FANTASTIC WORD, FANTASTIC BIRD
    W ord-watching, as opposed to birdwatching I suppose, has been my constant, passive, background hobby. The bird world is a fertile breeding ground for strange technical and non-technical terms.
    ‘Dihedral’ is a great one. This is the angle formed by two meeting or intersecting planes. You might wonder what that has to do with birds. Well, it is what the experts use to describe the shallow ‘V with which some larger birds of prey glide or soar. Marsh harriers have a beautifully clear ‘dihedral’.
    ‘Supercilium’ is a must. It is the Latin for eyebrow, but any bird book will be quick to describe a bird’s pale or dark supercil-ium. The yellow-browed warbler has a peach of a supercilium: yellow, of course.
    ‘Speculum’ is a metal device beloved of doctors and, I suppose, anyone else who wants to inspect a bodily orifice. It can also be a small mirror or reflector. In the avian world it is usually a bright, lustrous mark on the wings. You need go no further than the commonest duck of all, the mallard, to find a fab speculum: a flash of purply-blue on its wing.
    ‘Dander’, as in ‘get your dander up’, means feathers ‘ruffled in anger, warning or fear’. It is connected to the word ‘dandruff but generally used for animals; the scaly, scurfy skin caught in fur and hair. Horses produce a lot of it apparently.
    And then there are expressions that you only ever come across in descriptions of birds in field guides. ‘Rufous trousers’ is a beauty; sounding vaguely like a thirties’ jazz saxophonist, it is the reddish plumage near the rump and legs of some birds. The hobby will do nicely for this. And another great phrase, sounding like someone you might like to welcome to the stage to join Rufous Trousers and his band: Buffy Underparts. I won’t detain you with the birds whose underparts could be said to be buffy; the list is long.
    ‘Frantling’ is the mating call of a peacock. It