Confused? Allow me to elaborate, and hopefully it will all make sense!
Same name, different family
Let us begin with one of our best-known and best-loved birds, the Robin. In fact this is not one species but two: the American Robin, and the European Robin.
The American Robin is one of the bigger backyard visitors: 10 inches long, and about 2.7 ounces. Its European cousin, however, is only about 5.5 inches in length, about half that of its American counterpart; and tips the scales at a mere two-third of an ounce — less than a quarter of its American name twin’s weight.
American Robin
They sound quite different too: the American Robin is long, with a deep russet belly and breast and dark grey upperparts; the European Robin is short, plump and perky, with a brownish back and bright orange-red breast.
European Robin
And that’s the part that gives no help to the confusion. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in the New World in the fall of 1620, they were tired, frustrated and thousands of miles from home. When they saw a bird jumping around on the ground with a russet-red breast, they recalled a familiar bird at home, and decided to call it ‘robin’. Even though the American Robin is technically a thrush (and the European Robin is an Old-World flycatcher), the name stuck!
The Robin isn’t the only New-World bird sharing an Old-World name. Inspect those regulars I noted earlier: blackbirds, warblers and sparrows. The Blackbird is a big thrush in Europe — in fact, it’s a close relative of the American Robin, and so very similar in size and shape.
In North America, any species that has ‘blackbird’ in its name – including the continent’s most common bird, the Red-winged Blackbird – is in another big, diverse family, Icteridae, which also contains orioles, cowbirds, grackles and even meadowlarks (which are not at all closely related to the Old-World family of larks).
Red-winged Blackbird
Again, homesick British settlers saw birds with black plumage, superficially similar to the Blackbird they knew from home, and used the same name.
European Blackbird
Exactly the same process took place with two families of small, insectivorous, and mostly migratory birds colloquially referred to as ‘warblers’. Most species winter far to the south (those that breed in North America go to Central and South America; British and European species go to Africa).
The name ‘warbler’ comes from Britain, where a gaggle of similar-looking and hard-to-identify birds are frequently separated from each other by their beautiful and highly distinctive songs. In North America, more than fifty different types of small, colourful birds in the family Parulidae, known as the ‘wood-warblers’, received the name, the majority of them with ‘warbler’ as part of their name.
In Britain, many species get their name from their habitat: the place they either live at, or should be living at: examples being the Willow, Wood, Reed, Marsh and Sedge Warblers. That’s because in many cases their plumage differences are minor enough that they’re not always separable by field marks.
Willow Warbler
In North America, by contrast, warblers are generally brightly coloured birds, and sport rather distinctive plumages: and hence are often named after what they look like. There are Yellow, Black-and-white, Bay-breasted, Black-throated Green and Black-throated Blue Warblers, Yellowthroat, etc.
Yellow Warbler
The third group of birds are sparrows, different family but the same name. There are over thirty North American birds with ‘sparrow’ in their name: and with the exception of just one, they belong to the family Emberizidae.
In Britain these are called buntings (for an ancient word meaning ‘little plump thing’) and they include slight little birds like the Snow Bunting, which also occurs in North America.
The only exception is, of course, the House Sparrow. It had its roots in the Old World, and when humans first began settling down and farming the land, about 12,000 years ago, it learned to coexist with us, devouring grain and insects and nesting in our homes and other buildings – whence its name.
House Sparrows are ingenious and adaptable birds, and have found a way to reach the corners of the globe, by chance or by design. They were first detected in North America in 1851, when birds from Europe were released intentionally in Brooklyn, New York City. By 1900 they had expanded west and reached the Rocky Mountains, and nowadays they’re all over temperate North America, from Mexico to the USA to Canada.
House Sparrow
And even more confusingly, a handful of backyard and garden birds have completely different names, but actually belong to the same family as their European cousins. These include chickadees (tits in the UK), kinglets (crests) and creepers (treecreepers). And just as British English and American English sometimes have different names for the same thing — elevator and lift, faucet and tap, sidewalk and pavement — so some families of birds have different names on either side of the Atlantic: loons and divers, jaegers and skuas.
Black-capped Chickadee
Not all of the birds that you see at backyard bird feeders in the USA and Canada, or at garden bird feeders in the UK, come from different families. Thrushes, woodpeckers, nuthatches, wrens, finches and jays, and also pigeons and doves — all families that have radiated into the northern hemisphere (as have some that don’t use the bird feeders, such as owls, swifts, swallows and martins).
Sharing itself mostly spread from Old to New World but in one instance — the Wrens — did the opposite direction (the only member of its 90-strong family that occurs in Britain and Europe is the Eurasian Wren).
Euasian Wren
Carolina Wren
The big difference is no. of spp: while in N America we have 14 members of the thrush family, 22 woodpeckers, 4 nuthatches, 10 wrens, 21 finches, 10 jays and 13 pigeons + doves, in Britain there are just 5 thrushes, 3 woodpeckers, 1 nuthatch, 1 wren, 15 finches, 1 jay and 5 pigeons + doves. Partly, it’s a function of the massive difference between the relative size of our land area; and also — Britain is an island, and many of the species that are found on mainland Europe never crossed the English Channel.
Downy Woodpecker
Great Spotted Woodpecker
And finally, there are some species that exist on one side of the Atlantic but not (or at least not at all often) on the other.
And in North America, these would consist of hummingbirds, vireos, gnatcatchers and tanagers; in Britain and Europe, of accentors (like the Dunnock) and wagtails.
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Dunnock
How Do Birds Get Their Names?
You may be wondering by now how on earth our familiar back-yard and garden birds got their names in the first place? Well, most of them were taken from the names given by ordinary folk (hence the term ‘folk names’) and then later on rarer ones were formalised by professional scientists, naturalists or ornithologists.
In general, the English names of birds divide into seven distinct (and at times overlapping) categories:
Birds named after the noise they make
Birds called by their colour or hue
Stripped-down birds of sport, pattern or plumage feature
Birds are named after their habits or behaviour
Aphra Behn, who is named after the place where she lives (habitat)
Birds named for the place where they were first described
Nameless birds that are actually named after people (also known as eponyms)
Here are examples of each category:
Sound: Whippoorwill, Chickadee, Pewee (US); Chiffchaff, Cuckoo, Kittiwake (UK)
(FALSE (red) red; KUJAKU (purple) purple; S (yellow) יוו (U + 1F6E4) color or shade: Scarlet Tanager, Purple Martin, Yellow Warbler (US); Blue Tit, Greenfinch, Grey Wagtail (UK)
Pattern or plumage feature (often with a colour/shade): Yellow-rumped Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler, Tufted Titmouse (US); Crested Tit, White-fronted Goose, Blackcap (UK)
WRIGGLER: woodpeckers, nuthatches, creepers (both US and UK)
Habitats: Sedge Wren, Mountain Bluebird, Waterthrush (US), Sedge Warbler, Marsh Tit, Rock Pipit (UK)
Kentucky Warbler, California Gnatcatcher, Nashville Warbler (U.S.); Dartford Warbler, Kentish Plover, Sandwich Tern (U.K.)
Bachman’s Sparrow, Lucy’s Warbler, Brewer’s Blackbird (US); Bewick’s Swan, Cetti’s Warbler, Montagu’s Harrier (UK)
This is a very different bird fitted with a titleSadly, only one titmouse in North AmericaA final thing to note about English bird names is that because almost all of them are based on the British Isles, where only one member from many families typically occurs, the single-word version — Cuckoo, Wren, Swallow, Kingfisher, etc. (Here in North America, where there are far many more kinds from each family (Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Barn Swallow, Winter Wren, Belted Kingfisher and so on would come with those prefixes).
Mockingbird
If you’re interested in the fascinating and complex story of bird names, do read my book Mrs Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds got their Names, published by Guardian Faber and available in the USA, Canada and the UK.
Bird Names – Fun Facts!
North American Names
Catbird – the name derives from the bird’s mewing call which sounds just like a domestic cat! In fact, the creature is a member of the mockingbird and thrasher family.
Mockingbird – mockingbirds are among the best avian mimickers, capable of imitating the songs of many other species.
Kingbird — kingbirds are named for their aggressiveness — they are in the tyrant-flycatchers family Tyrannidae (Latin for ‘tyrant’).
Chuck-will’s Widow — a member of the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae; this and its cousin the Whip-poor-will get their names from their eerie calls.
Parasitic Jaeger — (Arctic Skua as it’s known in Britain), relative of the gulls known for its habit of stealing food from other birds — a behavior scientists refer to as ‘kleptoparasitism’ “Jaeger” is derived from German for hunter.
Skimmer — the only birds with a lower mandible (the bottom half of their bill) that is longer than the top, they get their name from their habit of dipping this into the water as they fly, then snapping it shut to catch fish near the surface.
The name (which is often simply shortened to ‘Peregrine’) derives from a Latin word meaning ‘to wander’, which reflects the fact that when hunting, these birds will often fly for long distances.
Spoonbill — from the unusual, spoon-like shape of the bird’s bill; it was also once called the ‘shoveler’ (now the name for a species of duck) because of its feeding habits.
Roadrunner — so named for its tendency to run fast across streets, and made famous by cartoon version. From the Spanish correcamino — which means the same thing!
Waterthrush — two species of wood-warblers (Louisiana and Northern) named for their thrush-like spotted breast and because they dwell along rivers and streams.
British Names
Cuckoo — named for the two-note call of the Common Cuckoo, a quintessential sign of spring across Britain and Europe.
Robin – in fact a nickname (derived from the diminutive of Robert), which proved to be more popular than the original name ‘Redbreast’.
Yellowhammer – absolutely nothing to do with tools, this comes from the German word for bunting, and was originally ‘Yellow-ammer’.
Redstart – ‘start’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘steort’, which means tail, and refers to the bird’s distinctive orange-red tail.
Chiffchaff — a bit like the name ‘cuckoo’, this relates to this tiny warbler’s two-note song.
Puffin – little fat thing, originally applied to young Manx Shearwater, which were hunted for food and oil, so that’s the shearwater’s scientific name, Puffinus puffinus!
Stonechat – named for its characteristic call, which resembles two small pebbles tapping together.
Crossbill — named for its “cross” bill, whose two mandibles cross over each other, allowing the bird to pry open pinecones to access the seeds inside.
Redpoll – from an obsolete term for ‘head’, as in ‘poll tax’.
Nuthatch — again, no involvement in laying eggs — this is derived from an old word for ‘hack’ (as in ‘hatchet’) based on the bird’s habit of using its strong bill to break nuts.
