Ray Reedman combines his love of birds and travel with a deep understanding of language and history. As a retired Senior Master of a successful independent school Ray rekindled a life-long love of the natural world by teaching courses on ornithology and travelling the world to watch birds.
Description
Introduction Historical Perspectives Roots and routes Widening horizons Frameworks The milestones Developments before Linnaeus Linnaeus and the Linnaean System The evolution of formal English names Inside the System The matrix Classic deviations The names behind the names Things in their place Cardinal points And the scientists didn't always do so well Warts and all The names and the stories New Horizons North American names - Crossing the Great Divide Australian names - Let's go fossicking Trinidadian names - The Tropical Trail Journey's End Appendix: The Legends behind the Names Bibliography
Reviews
Lapwings, Loons & Lousy Jacks is a fountain of lore that should definitely be sampled by anyone thirsty for bird name stories. Moreover, in tracing some of its more tangled tales it sheds valuable light on how both science and language work when confronted with a vast and unruly collection of living things - by which I mean both the birds and the people who want to identify them. -- Carrie Laben, Author Examining the names of a variety of bird species from scientific as well as folkloric perspectives, Reedman s book sounds just right to satisfy-as well as pique-the curiosity of those, like myself, who have long wondered at the stories behind, and reasons for, the names by which the birds around us are-and have been-known. -- John E. Riutta, The Well-read Naturalist The names of birds-common, scientific and colloquial-almost form a poetry of their own, so varied and sometimes apparently inexplicable are they. This book admirably tries to pull together pretty much everything there is to know about ornithological nomenclature, looking at the stories behind names, the history of our naming systems, and the way that scientific names are assigned. -- Matt Merritt BirdWatching Magazine