Birdwatching: How do you talk about pileated woodpeckers?
This winter, by dumb luck, I stumbled upon a pair of pileated woodpeckers in the woods a half-mile from my home. I was looking for two eastern bluebirds I had seen earlier and came across these large gorgeous creatures instead.
In the process, I learned a bit about human nature and the real joys of birding.
I should mention here that I’ve heard the wild and crazy calls of these woodpeckers many times, especially on High Mountain in Wayne and by Lake Henry in Mahwah. On a few occasions, I’ve gotten as close as 25 yards from them. But every time I’ve attempted to photograph them, something went amiss.
This day was different. The bird was in direct sunlight, oblivious to my presence and on a tree nearby. Incredibly, I had my best camera with a 400mm telephoto lens attached, the battery wasn’t dead, and the memory card was ready to go.
So I fired away, hoping to get a shot that wasn’t marred by the bird shutting its eyes, a branch obstructing the view, or any of the other Murphy’s Laws that afflict photographers the whole world over.
Story continues below photo gallery.
As I hurried home to download the images, I felt confident that somewhere in the batch of 67 images, at least one was a keeper. Then it struck me. Taking the photo was one thing. Talking about it was another matter altogether.
Like most folks, I wince a little when anybody corrects me when I mispronounce a word. Experience has taught me that the “pileated” is one of a handful of bird names with pronunciations that I trip over.
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When I first started birding, I pronounced the woodpecker’s name phonetically: PILE -ee-ay-ted. Every time I said it, some word nerd would correct me. “No,” they’d say. “It’s pronounced PILL-ee-ay-ted.”
When I asked how they knew, they said they’d studied Latin when they were young.
Good to know, I thought, and moved on with my life.
Then I was on a bird walk and spotted another of these huge-billed, red-crested birds.
“Look,” I said in an urgent whisper, careful not to point or raise my binoculars too quickly. “There's a PILL-ee-ay-ted woodpecker on that tree!”
No sooner had the words left my lips than a teenage girl corrected me. “It’s pronounced PILE-ee-ay-ted,” she said in a tone that implied I must be hard of thinking. “Just like it’s spelled.”
“But it’s from the Latin,” I replied knowingly. “I understand the Romans pronounced it the other way,”
She shrugged and said: “How would anyone today know how the ancient Romans pronounced anything?”
Touché.
To solve the problem, I took to saying the bird’s name both ways at once, with a hyphen: “Look,” I’d say in an urgent whisper. “There’s a PILL-ee-ay-ted-PILE-ee-ay-ted woodpecker.”
But that sounded even dumber. After that, I tried to avoid saying “pileated” altogether.
But now that I’d taken a nifty photo of one, I had to address the issue. How does one pronounce this bird’s name?
I decided to go online for an authoritative answer. Luckily, after a few clicks, I came upon a Cornell Lab of Ornithology article entitled “Dr. Language Person's Guide to Bird Name Pronunciations.”
Regarding the aforementioned woodpecker, the writer Kevin McGowan advises:
“PILEATED (Woodpecker) - PIE-lee-ay-tid, PILL-ee-ay-tid (having a pileus or cap). This … (is) commonly pronounced as the two alternate versions listed from the dictionary. If it bothers you when people say it differently than you do, lighten up. They're just birds, for goodness sakes, and THEY don't care what you call them.”
Amen.
The Bird-watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.
Don't miss my column "The Bird Watcher" in The Record. My nature blog: www.celeryfarm.net.