[obol] Rare bird week

[Bruce]

There are other species of Spotten birds, Spotten Gull for instance. I 
have first-hand knowledge of these. My car has first-hand knowledge of 
Spotten Starling. I've heard stories from fisherpeople of Spotten Heron, 
also called Sh**pole by some fisherpeople. My brother gave me a birding 
book about various Spotten species. It is politically-correctly titled 
"What Bird Did That?" ISBN 0-89815-427-8. Perhaps this area (or should I 
say spot?) of birding has been neglected, such as, not enough Cheer was 
used on that shirt?

Bruce.

DJLauten and KACastelein wrote:
> Sheila wrote:
> 
> 
> ,SPOTTEN TOWHEE,
> 
> 
> I love Spotten Towhees.  These are closely related to Spotted Towhees. 
> However, a major distinguishing characteristics of Spotten Towhees is 
> they have just ten spots, five on each side.  The spots are neatly 
> plottened out on the wing coverts of the towhee.  One needs to carefully 
> count the spots to tell the difference between these closely related 
> species.  Spotten Towhees are often spotten feeding on the ground under 
> bird feeders, often in close proximity to their closely related Spotted 
> Towhee brethen.  Spotten Towhees also have a very unique song, easily 
> told apart from their close relative.  It is said that the song starts 
> with an emphatic "ssspppppp", followed by an owl like "ooohhh", and 
> ending with a shrilly and descending "pteeeeennnnn" note.  Sung quickly, 
> the song sounds much like its common name - "Sp-o-ten".  It is said that 
> the common name of the bird came from the wife of the great 
> ornithologist and explorer Lewis Clark, who was cleaning off a 
> particularly nasty stain on one of Mr. Clark's shirts that was caused by 
> the flying towhee who defecated in Mr. Clark's direction as he attempted 
> to collect the bird for a museum.  The story apparently is that Mr. 
> Clark was packing the specimen and writing a label with the suggested 
> common name of Ten-spotted Towhee, when Mrs. Clark shouted out that she 
> could not get "this damn spotten out of the shirt", at which point Mr. 
> Clark mistakenly miswrote "spotten" instead of "ten-spotted".  The rest 
> is history.
> 
> ; )
> 
> Cheers
> Dave Lauten
> Bandon OR
> deweysage at verizon.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
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