Have you ever heard the term “butter butt?” Or maybe a wildlife watcher refer to the animal moving through the water as a “snake bird?”
Where do these names come from and what do they represent?
Their sources can be as varied as the names themselves. Some of these comical bird names come from the sounds a bird makes, like the plain chachalaca. The ancient Aztec word “chakalaka” means “loud voice or babbler.” Seems appropriate for a bird that is described by iBird as “loud and gregarious.” Reminds me more of the song from the 1970s that wound up as the audio track on the dancing baby meme in the 1996 animated gif that spread across the fledgling Internet like wildfire. (Sorry, that track is sure to become an earworm in your head.)
The phrase “butter butt” refers to yellow-rumped warblers, which have started to return to Estes Park and will spend the summer in the area. The butter butt reference describes the patch of bright lemon-yellow feathers on the rump of the bird.
“Snake bird” is a common phrase used to describe the anhinga as it stealthily swims through the water. As it slithers through the water, it only reveals its long neck held in an s-shape posture, which gives the impression of a snake rising out of the lake.
The anhinga has a second descriptive nickname, the “water turkey.” This relates to the anhinga’s turkey like tail that fans out and has white bands on the tips.
How about the “candlestick bird?”
The long-billed curlew, which is North America’s largest shorebird, has the distinction of this nickname because of its long, curved bill. Surprisingly, Candlestick Park in San Francisco is named after this bird’s moniker because the species used to be prevalent in the area.
A popular bird with those looking to add a species to their life list, or just to photograph this bird’s vibrant patchwork of colors, is the “flying rainbow.” This is an obvious and aptly applied nickname for the painted bunting, the only bird in the U.S. to have a blue head and red underparts. He also has green and yellow wings and a red ring around its eye. Female painted buntings are blended shades of yellow and green.
Appropriately, a group of painted buntings are referred to as a “palette.”
Although there are dozens of unique, funny and head-scratching bird nicknames, here is one more that tells a story about the behavior of the species: the “butcher bird.”
Quite a visual description, this nickname refers to loggerhead and northern shrikes. These birds have a ghastly way to feed themselves: they will swoop down and hit insects and sometimes small birds and mammals on the head with their hooked bill and then take the prey to impale it on a barbed wire or thorn to eat later.
