Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:52:54 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Skunkheads reducks 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In memory of Lynwood Horner, waterman, our guide at Cape Charles 1965-1999. May his very good soul rest in peace. He was always so nice to me and my family. Machine gunner with the Merchant Marine in The War. He was as discriminating about birds as most birders. Even when his arthritis would seize up on him he'd go out there clammin' or crabbin', or when there was a big wreck of conchs washed up on the shore. He didn't know what it was but he once described perfectly a Dovekie he had seen around his boat one winter day, a description that would have sailed right through any rarities committee review. GLOSSARY: alewive = herring or Atlantic Menhaden; arsters = oysters; big striker = Royal Tern; black-breasted beetler = Black-bellied Plover; blowtoad = Northern Puffer a.k.a. swelltoad, these fish become globular by swallowing water or air to discourage predation; blue crane = Great Blue Heron; cacklin' gull = Laughing Gull; calicoback = Ruddy Turnstone; canary = American Goldfinch; chicken hawk = Red-tailed or other hawks; clubhead = Common Goldeneye; conchs = whelks; cormorant, etc. = Double-crested Cormorant; crabs = all the terms referred to in paragraph 6 are for Blue Crabs; curlew = Whimbrel; doublehead = Cownose Ray a.k.a. skate; dowdie = Oyster Toadfish a.k.a. oystercracker; field lark = Eastern Meadowlark; fish ducks = mergansers; flood gull = Black Skimmer; hairy head = Hooded Merganser; hardhead = Croaker; hollerin' boys = Chuck-will's-widow; killdee = Killdeer; little dipper = Bufflehead; little striker = Common, Forster's or Least Terns; marsh hen or mud hen = rail; minnie hawk = Least Tern; partridge = Northern Bobwhite; pigwitch = Horned Grebe a.k.a. waterwitch; pond snout = Hooded Merganser; puppy drum = a small Black Drum, analogous to other names for small forms of fish species such as snapper blues and peanut menhaden; reedbirds = Bobolinks; robin snipe = Red Knot; rock = Striped Bass; sage hen = Clapper Rail; scowp = Green Heron; sea coots = scoters; sea crow = American Oystercatcher; sewin' machines = dowitchers; sheldrake = Red-breasted Merganser; sicklebill = Glossy or White Ibis (Whites are now regular if uncommon nesters on Fisherman's Island and sometimes elsewhere on the Virginia Eastern Shore); skunkhead = Surf Scoter; soft crab gull = Laughing Gull; southerlies = Long-tailed Duck, formerly Oldsquaw; spoonbill = Northern Shoveler; sprig = Northern Pintail; straight-billed curlew = Marbled Godwit; tump = small marshy island, used especially in the vicinity of the Maryland-Virginia boundary both in Chincoteague and Chesapeake Bays; tuna bird = shearwater; waterwitch = Horned Grebe; Whip-poor-will = Chuck-will's-widow; white crane = Great or other egrets; winter gull = Herring Gull; wop = night heron (there is a hammock on northern Smith Island, MD, known as Woptown). Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Sue Hamilton, Marty Cribb, and Wanda Cole for clarifying some of these terms and otherwise helping to enhance this and to John M. Camper, Jr., Charles Cook, Emma Greene, Lynwood Horner, George Reiger, Levin Willey, and others who taught me these names. 1,802 words. written 11/22/00. revised 11/29/00. other minor revisions later on. ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================