Studying birds for a trip abroad

My quest to master Italian bird names

Welcome to Owl My Children, an irregular, sometimes-monthly newsletter where I recap the latest bird goings-on in my life and offer some rudimentary translations.

Hi! It’s been a while! I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve been struggling to stay afloat amidst a general inundation of daily emails and internet content and work. I also don’t want birding to become a chore—but by tying a newsletter to it, I sometimes feel like I’ve done just that. I feel like I need to do more, be more interesting, keep the bird wagon chugging inexorably forward.

Sometimes the bird wagon just isn’t chugging. Sometimes it’s hot and all I want to do is watch Love Island.

I could tell you about attending The Biggest Week in American Birding with Michael and our friend Ben—we were only there for a weekend, but we had some really good birding days and saw many, many prothonotary warblers up close—or I could tell you about a recent trip to see my aunt and uncle in Hilton Head, where there was a clapper rail calling in the marsh in their backyard and a bunch of black-bellied whistling duck babies swimming in the drainage ditch by their house. But I’ve enjoyed being able to look at my photos and savor those experiences without having to write down every detail, and it’s nice to let myself off the hook once in a while. I started this newsletter to have fun and to enable myself to research interesting bird tidbits, so that’s what I’m going to try to do.

This prothonotary warbler flew right up to me and perched on this branch for several minutes, then spent several more minutes flitting around my head and investigating the bug scene at Sheldon Marsh. Here’s my hot take about Biggest Week: Sheldon Marsh was actually more fun than Magee Marsh. There were no crowds to fight, and we weren’t trapped on a boardwalk the whole time. But Magee Marsh was still pretty magical. [Photo by me]

So here’s something I’ve been having fun researching lately: Italian birds and bird names. Because I’m going to Italy!

Gotta start practicing my sparrow ID! This is a house sparrow, but there are three kinds of birds I could see in Sicily that all LOOK like house sparrows: Italian sparrows, Spanish sparrows, and Eurasian tree sparrows. There are also Italian x Spanish sparrow hybrids. I do not know if I will be able to do this. [Photo taken in Pittsburgh by me]

Italy and me: a brief history

I studied Italian in college. I chose Italian instead of Spanish because I only had three years of Spanish in high school, and I was afraid that most of my college classmates had way more experience than that. I had (and still have) a deep, abiding fear of not being the best, so I decided to choose a brand new language. At least I would be on a level playing field with my classmates.

Having four consistent days of a language class each week and figuring out verb tenses and memorizing nouns actually turned out to be fun, so I stuck with it. I took six semesters of Italian and then later took Italian lessons for a summer, and my senior year, I completed an independent study project about gendered language in the original Italian text of Dante’s Purgatorio.

But I never got it together to actually go to Italy.

Right before I graduated, I applied for a job at an Italian castle. When I logged on to do the Skype interview in Italian, it was as though I’d never heard the language before. I completely froze. I forgot how to introduce myself. I was asked a question; I had no idea what the question was.

I didn’t get the job.

So I graduated and never used Italian again.

Fast-forward twelve years. Michael gets accepted to give a talk in Palermo. Holly panics and tries to re-learn everything she ever knew about Italian while also researching all the Sicilian birds she has never heard of before and memorizing their Italian names and registering for various Italian bird databases because nobody over there uses eBird and—

Can you tell I’m excited and also freaking out?!

How to prepare for a trip when you don’t know the birds

The first thing I did, when I learned I was going to Sicily, was log on to the Italian eBird database. Then I learned that Italy is woefully under-eBirded.

There seem to be two reasons for this:

1. There are too many databases all trying to do the same thing.

2. Birding isn’t super popular in Italy. (In fact, five million birds are estimated to be hunted illegally in Italy every year, which is a real bummer.)

I found several Italian birding databases within just a few minutes of googling. Each database seemed somewhat active but not at all robust. There’s EBN Italia—the equivalent of the National Audubon Society—which has its own database for bird sightings known as Ubird. Then there’s Ornitho.it, another online database which seems to be a little less flashy and more traditional. Then there’s good old iNaturalist, which I admittedly don’t use enough in the US, but at least it’s a familiar platform.

I quickly registered for all the options and started looking for birds in Palermo—only to realize that Palermo doesn’t have any birding hotspots. Most of the hotspots in Sicily are at nature reserves, which would require me to have a car.

And after a few more minutes of googling, I realized that it does not seem wise to rent a car in Sicily. According to Google’s AI Overview, “Driving in Sicily can be challenging, particularly in cities and historic centers, due to a combination of factors like narrow roads, aggressive drivers, and confusing traffic patterns.” And according to this lovely blog post on Rick Steves’s Travel Blog: “Drivers who refuse to accept Sicily on Sicily’s terms will need to end each journey by popping a Xanax and prying their raw, white-knuckled, death-grip claws from the steering wheel.”

So, no car for me. Which means I’ll be sticking in and around Palermo, perhaps taking a train to nearby destinations. I’m already preparing myself for the sad reality that I won’t get to see flamingos, as they are most often found at the salt pans outside of Siracusa—too far a journey for a car-free tourist.

Here’s me in Rotterdam last year, pointing at a rock pigeon. This is likely what I will be doing in Palermo as well. [Photo by Michael]

While scrolling through Ubird, I quickly realized another obstacle to birding in Italy: birds have different names there! Not only are most of the birds going to be completely new to me, but they also have Italian common names in addition to their common names in English.

(I know in my heart of hearts that I do not actually need to speak Italian to go to Italy, nor do I need to memorize all of the Italian names of all the birds there. But I wanna! What if there comes a time when I must ask a stranger where the birds are?)

So I created a Google spreadsheet and got to work.

I made columns for the Italian common name, the English equivalent, and the scientific name, for good measure. I also made sections for “Looks like,” “Where to find it,” “Sounds like,” and “Notes.” To be perfectly honest, the benefit of such a spreadsheet is not in the having of the spreadsheet, but in the creation of it. By forcing myself to look up each and every bird, then make a comparison of that bird to a bird I already know, then listen to its call, then record helpful ID notes, I was hoping that I would learn the birds and be SLIGHTLY more prepared when I arrive in Italy.

Type 1 Fun

You’d think the process of making a spreadsheet and trying to learn Italian bird names would be tedious, but it turned out to be great fun, and I will look back upon the process fondly. It was surprisingly exciting to read the Italian common names of birds and try to guess the English equivalent. It scratched a similar itch as reading La Divina Commedia back in the day. Learning about Italian birds and bird families was not dissimilar to memorizing every Circle of Hell and its associated Italian bureaucrats.

Here’s a fun example. EBN Italia told me that one of the birds I could see in Sicily was the Corriere piccolo. I remembered that piccolo means small, and corriere looks like courier. I also knew that “to run” in Italian is “correre,” so I wondered if there was some association.

Little messenger, little runner…

What bird would that be?

It’s a little ringed plover! Of course!! I have to say, the Italian name is much cuter than the English one.

Let’s play!

Here are some Italian common names of birds you may know in the US or their relatives. I’ve put the answers in footnotes if you’d like to quiz yourself.

• Falco pescatore. You can guess what falco means. Pescatore, pescatore… Seems similar to the English word pescatarian… What bird do you think it might be?¹

• Airone bianco maggiore. The first word, when said aloud, sounds like eye-ee-ROHN-ay and can be connected to a similar-sounding English word. The last two words are descriptors for white and big (maggiore = major, greater, etc.).²

• Avocetta. Easy one.³

• Gabbiano comune. I’ll tell you that comune means common (so this bird is common in Italy, not necessarily here). Gabbiano sounds like the perfect word for this loud and talkative bird.⁴

• Scricciolo. This word is pronounced SKREE-cholo.⁵ It’s not what you think, but it does make sense.

I recognize that if you have not encountered any Romance languages, this might not be a fun game. So here’s another opportunity for bird fun: look at a bird you don’t know and compare it to a bird you do.

• Here’s a European stonechat (saltimpalo in the Italian). I have never seen this bird, but I think it looks like an American redstart + a European robin. The word “stonechat” itself looks like a descriptor and a verb stuck together, as does the word “redstart.” Now maybe I’ll remember what a stonechat looks like.

• Here’s a northern wheatear (culbianco boreale in Italian). To me, this looks like an American robin dressed up as a sunburnt northern shrike for Halloween. I looked up where the word “wheatear” comes from because I don’t understand it (this bird doesn’t have visible ears, does it??) and Merriam Webster claims it comes from the Old English wheat (“white”) + ear (“arse”), because it has a white rump. Culbianco also translates to “white rump”! The first usage of wheatear to describe a bird was in 1591.

• Here’s a Sardinian warbler (occhiocotto in Italian). This is another case where I believe the Italian does much better than the English in describing the bird. Occhio means eye, and cotto means cooked. It’s perfect. Something in this bird’s expression and posture reminds me of a blue-gray gnatcatcher.

What do these birds remind you of?

Here’s an American redstart. Not a stonechat. [Photo by me]

Final observations (and insults)

One last thing I appreciated about the process of making this spreadsheet was the chance to read new eBird descriptions. eBird does not try to be objective, oh no. They are clear about the birds they love and blunt about the birds they think are ugly.

Here are some things eBird says.

• Of the European roller: “Spectacular and distinctive.”

• Of the Eurasian thick-knee: “Large bizarre shorebird of open stony heathland and dry grassland.”

• Of the European goldfinch: “Beautiful little finch with a sharp pink bill, cherry-red face, and brilliant black-and-yellow flashes in the wings.”

• Of the Cetti’s warbler: “Dumpy and broad-tailed warbler, warm brown above and pale grayish below, with a narrow eyebrow.”

• Of the Eurasian crag-martin: “Frequently gives a hard, dry ‘chrrt.’”

If you’re planning a trip to Italy and want access to my spreadsheet, just let me know and I’d be happy to send it along. Or if you’ve ever been to Italy, I’d love to hear how it went!

For now, I’ll just keep practicing. Mi scusi, dove posso trovare i fenicotteri? (Excuse me, where can I find the flamingos?)

Arrivederci,

Holly

1. Falco pescatore = osprey! The translation is “fisherman falcon.”

2. Airone bianco maggiore = great egret! “Airone” kind of sounds like “heron,” so the translation would be “greater white heron.”

3. Avocetta = pied avocet! It’s the only kind of avocet you can see in Italy.

4. Gabbiano comune = black-headed gull! Or, as the translation would say, “common gull.”

5. Scricciolo = Eurasian wren! I like how the word sounds—like it’s indicating something small but loud. I read that, in Italy, you can also use this word to talk about people, kind of like calling someone a “small fry” or a “shrimp.”