tick

From Middle English tek (“light touch, tap”).

There are few birders who have not had stringy ticks on their lists at some stage.

1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 76:

A twitcher's list is very democratic. Each bird counts as one tick. There are no extra points for beauty or rarity. The humble sparrow counts just as much as a Wedge-tailed Eagle or a Paradise Parrot.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 41:

(birdwatching) A bird seen (or heard) by a birdwatcher, for the first time that day, year, trip, etc., and thus added to a list of observed birds.


tick

en-verb

tick (third-person singular simple present ticks, present participle ticking, simple past and past participle ticked)

ticks (present singular third-person)
ticking (participle present)
ticked (participle past)
ticked (past)

(birdwatching, transitive) To add (a bird) to a list of birds that have been seen (or heard).


red

en-noun

red (countable and uncountable, plural reds)

From Middle English red, from Old English rēad, from Proto-West Germanic *raud, from Proto-Germanic *raudaz from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rowdʰós, from the root *h₁rewdʰ-.
Cognates
See also West Frisian read, Low German root, rod, Dutch rood, German rot, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål rød, Norwegian Nynorsk raud; also Welsh rhudd, Latin ruber, rufus, Tocharian A rtär, Tocharian B ratre, Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός (eruthrós), Albanian pruth (“redhead”), Russian ру́дый (rúdyj) ("red", "redhaired"). Czech rudý, Lithuanian raúdas, Finnish rauta, Estonian raud, Serbo-Croatian riđ ("reddish", "red"), Avestan 𐬭𐬀𐬊𐬌𐬛𐬌𐬙𐬀 (raoidita), Sanskrit रुधिर (rudhirá, “red, bloody”).

sekobarbitaali

slang: secobarbital — see also secobarbital

(countable, informal, UK, birdwatching) A redshank.


have

en-verb

have (third-person singular simple present has, present participle having, simple past and past participle had)

has (present singular third-person)
having (participle present)
had (participle past)
had (past)
have (infinitive)

From Middle English haven, from Old English habban (“to have”), from Proto-West Germanic *habbjan, from Proto-Germanic *habjaną (“to have”), durative of *habjaną (“to lift, take up”), from Proto-Indo-European *kh₂pyéti, present tense of *keh₂p- (“to take, seize, catch”). Related to heave.
Since there is no common Indo-European root for a transitive possessive verb have (notice that Latin habeō is not etymologically related to English have), Proto-Indo-European probably lacked the have structure. Instead, the third person forms of be were used, with the possessor in dative case, compare Latin mihi est / sunt, literally to me is / are.
Cognates
Cognate with Saterland Frisian hääbe (“to have”), West Frisian hawwe (“to have”), Dutch hebben (“to have”), Afrikaans hê (“to have”), Low German hebben, hewwen (“to have”), German haben (“to have”), Danish have (“to have”), Swedish hava (“to have”), Norwegian Nynorsk ha (“to have”), Icelandic hafa (“to have”), Albanian kap (“I grab, catch, grip”), Latin capiō (“take”, verb), Russian хапать (xapatʹ, “to seize”).

saada

in some cases; normally a direct sentence would be used

For some reason, "I had a Freckled Duck today" never seems to work as a pick-up line.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 57:

(transitive, birdwatching) To make an observation of (a bird species).


string

string (third-person singular simple present strings, present participle stringing, simple past strung or (obsolete or nonstandard) strang, past participle strung)

strings (present singular third-person)
stringing (participle present)
strung (past)
strang (nonstandard obsolete past)
strung (participle past)

From Middle English stryngen, strengen, from the noun (see above).

To be honest, you'd be better off trying to string a Skylark as a Richard's Pipit rather than as a Pectoral Sandpiper.

1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 81:

For instance he might see a White-eared Honeyeater, a not uncommon bird in the heathy areas at Bunyip, but in his excitement to call it, something in his brain scrambled and came out as: `White-cheeked Honeyeater!' White-cheeked Honeyeater is an absolute stonking crippler in Victoria, but Stu was not actually trying to string a rarity, he'd just got such a flood of new information swirling around his brain that sometimes it got jumbled up.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 67:

(birdwatching) To deliberately state that a certain bird is present when it is not; to knowingly mislead other birders about the occurrence of a bird, especially a rarity; to misidentify a common bird as a rare species.


sarnie

From sarn- (“perhaps from a dialectal pronunciation of the first syllable of sandwich”) + -ie. Alternatively, perhaps a misreading or an intentional dissimilation of samie (i.e. sammie), where the 'm' is mistaken for or replaced with 'rn'.

suffix

perhaps from a dialectal pronunciation of the first syllable of <i class="Latn mention" lang="en">sandwich</i>


peep

From Middle English pepen. Compare Dutch piepen (“peep”), German Low German piepen (“to peep”), German piepen and pfeifen, all probably onomatopoeic.

(birdwatching, colloquial) A sandpiper or other small wader.


lister

(birdwatching) A birdwatcher who keeps track of birds using different checklists.


dip

en-noun

dip (countable and uncountable, plural dips)

From Middle English dippen, from Old English dyppan, from Proto-West Germanic *duppjan, from Proto-Germanic *dupjaną; see *daupijaną (“to dip”). Related to deep.

I'd missed them by a couple of hours. This dip did not bode well for the Hudwit.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 124:

(birdwatching, colloquial) The act of missing out on seeing a sought after bird.


dip

en-verb

dip (third-person singular simple present dips, present participle dipping, simple past and past participle dipped)

dips (present singular third-person)
dipping (participle present)
dipped (participle past)
dipped (past)

dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians

I assured him that I'd been birding long enough to know that there were no guarantees with birds and I wouldn't have held it against him if I'd dipped.

(birdwatching, colloquial) To miss out on seeing a sought after bird.


scope

scope (third-person singular simple present scopes, present participle scoping, simple past and past participle scoped)

scopes (present singular third-person)
scoping (participle present)
scoped (participle past)
scoped (past)

From Italian scopo (“purpose”), from Latin scopus (“target”), from Ancient Greek σκοπός (skopós), from σκέπτομαι (sképtomai), from Proto-Indo-European *speḱ-. Etymologically related to skeptic and spectrum.

`Maybe there was another darker bird and it had flown away before we could scope it?' `Yes there must have been,' came the grim-faced reply.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 199:

(birdwatching, informal) To observe a bird using a spotting scope.


twitch

en-noun

twitch (countable and uncountable, plural twitches)

From Middle English twicchen, from Old English *twiċċan, from Proto-West Germanic *twikkijan (“to nail, pin, fasten, clasp, pinch”).
Cognate with English tweak, Low German twikken, German Low German twicken (“to pinch, pinch off”), zweckōn and gizwickan (> German zwicken (“to pinch”)).

cog

(birdwatching) A trip taken in order to observe a rare bird.


jizz

en-noun

jizz (usually uncountable, plural jizzes)

The earliest known appearance in print dates from 1922, in Thomas Coward's "Country Diary" column for the Manchester Guardian of 6 December 1921; the piece was subsequently included in his 1922 book Bird Haunts and Nature Memories. He attributed it to "a west-coast Irishman", and explained:
:if we are walking on the road and see, far ahead, someone whom we recognise although we can neither distinguish features nor particular clothes, we may be certain that we are not mistaken; there is something in the carriage, the walk, the general appearance which is familiar; it is, in fact, the individual's jizz.
There are several theories as to the etymology of “jizz”:
* From the military term GIS (“general impression and shape”).
* Possible contraction of just is (in the sense that a particular bird species “just is” that species).
An essay by Greenwood and Greenwood in 2018 debunks these theories. Other suggestions include variants of guise, gist and gestalt (mispronounced).

A West Coast Irishman was familiar with the wild creatures which dwelt on or visited his rocks and shores; at a glance he could name them, usually correctly, but if asked how he knew them would reply ‘By their "jizz".’

1922, TA Coward, Bird Haunts and Nature Memories, London: Warne:

Political cartoonists rely a lot on jizz. When a new president or prime minister comes into office it usually takes the cartoonists a little while to decide which features to select as field marks but they then stylise these in ways that make them instantly recognisable to the rest of us, even though they may be grossly exaggerated.

2009, Jeremy Mynott, chapter 3, in Birdscapes, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton, page 74:

His birds are not carefully posed to illustrate every plumage detail; they are impressions rather than portraits. With a few deft strokes of his pencil, he captures their 'jizz'.

2015, Nick Davies, chapter 3, in Cuckoo - Cheating by Nature (paperback), London: Bloomsbury, page 53:

(ornithology, birdwatching) The physical and behavioural characteristics of a bird that enable it to be immediately recognised by an experienced birder as a certain type of bird, especially to family or genus level.


bander

He got a banding permit in the early 30s and was an active bander for the rest of his life.

1993 November 26, Jerry Sullivan, “Field & Street”, in Chicago Reader:


Slav

From Middle English sclave, borrowed from Medieval Latin Sclavus, from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos); see that entry for more. Doublet of slave and ciao. Displaced native Old English Wined.

(British, birdwatching) The Slavonian grebe.


ticker

(birdwatching, slang) A birdwatcher who aims to see (and tick off on a list) as many bird species as possible.


stringer

[T]hose fellows know how to spot a stringer at work.

1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 82:

(birdwatching) A person who deliberately states that a certain bird is present when it is not; one who knowingly misleads other birders about the occurrence of a bird, especially a rarity.


gen

I had some recent gen that they had been seen quite recently at Kunoth Well, a little dot on the map on the edge of the Tanami Desert.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 172:

(birdwatching) Information about the location of a bird.


birder

Many of the crofters on Fair Isle and Shetland know as much about the birds as the birders.

1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 47:

It's good to be the king. Even if the kingdom is rather small. It is amazing how often really good birders are borderline megalomaniacs.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 37:


birdwatcher

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-birdwatcher.wav

Alec Warner was gazing like a bird-watcher at Charmian, who plucked at the rug round her knees, waiting to tell her own story.

1959, Muriel Spark, chapter 5, in Memento Mori, London: Macmillan:

(birdwatching) A person who observes or identifies wild birds in their natural environment.

觀鳥者

a person who observes or identifies wild birds in their natural environment


twitching

twitching (countable and uncountable, plural twitchings)

(birdwatching) Compulsive birdwatching by people (twitchers) who travel long distances to see rare species.


lifer

I saw six species of honeyeaters new to me and went home with 16 lifers and some bad sandfly bites.

2013, Sue Taylor, Best 100 Birdwatching Sites in Australia:

(birdwatching) A bird species seen for the first time by a birder who is keeping a list of all the species he or she has ever seen.


baldie

The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. Plus the bird is endangered. So, yeah, I'd probably have a problem with sitting down to a plate of baldie for dinner.

1999 August 15, Staca Hiatt, “Re: Anyone ever tried emu?”, in alt.support.diet.low-fat (Usenet):

They are almost always accompanied by immature bald eagles that, although about the same size as a mature baldie, have a darkened head and mottled feathers.

2010, Bruce Squiers, “Winter's Majesty”, in Marty Becker, Gina Spadafori, Mikkel Becker Shannon, editors, The Ultimate Bird Lover: Stories and Advice on Our Feathered Friends at Home and in the Wild, Health Communications, Inc., →ISBN, page 161:

Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Haliaeetus leucocephalus#Translingual

(birdwatching, slang) The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).


dipping

dipping (countable and uncountable, plural dippings)

That same trip would have to go down as the greatest dipping fest in Australian birding history. I had five target species and never saw one, despite spending a week looking for them.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 35:

(birdwatching) The act or fact of missing out on seeing a bird.


stringy

en-adj

stringy (comparative stringier, superlative stringiest)

stringier (comparative)
stringiest (superlative)

There are few birders who have not had stringy ticks on their lists at some stage.

1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 76:

(birdwatching) Of a sighting, unlikely to be accurate; probably based on a misidentification, whether innocent or deliberate.


confiding

confiding (comparative more confiding, superlative most confiding)

more confiding (comparative)
most confiding (superlative)

(birdwatching) Of a bird, allowing the close approach of humans.


sharpie

It is harder to gauge the shorter tail of sharpies, but on sitting birds the tail shape is a more useful character than it is on flying birds. Sharpies of all ages and sexes almost always show a notched tail when they are sitting.

2005, Bill Thompson, Eirik A. T. Blom, Jeffrey A. Gordon, Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges, page 93:

My mother had lost a considerable number of spring chicks to a raiding sharpie.

2010, Era S. VanDenburg, The Natural World of Ivy Lane, page 48:

sharp-shinned hawk
sharp-shinned hawk#English

(birdwatching) Clipping of sharp-shinned hawk.


LBJ

little brown job
little brown job#English

(birdwatching) Initialism of little brown job.


GISS

Variant of jizz as though originating from initialism of general impression size and shape (a popular folk etymology).

initialism of

(birdwatching) The general look of a bird.


red-throat

(British, birdwatching) The red-throated diver.


black-throat

black-throated diver
black-throated diver

Gavia arctica
Gavia arctica#Translingual

(British, birdwatching) The black-throated diver (Gavia arctica).


crestie

(Northern England, birdwatching) the great crested grebe.


great crest

(UK, informal, rare, birdwatching) the great crested grebe.


red-leg

red-legged partridge
red-legged partridge

(UK, birdwatching) The red-legged partridge.


spotshank

(UK, birdwatching, informal) The spotted redshank.


blackwit

(Yorkshire, birdwatching) the black-tailed godwit.


spot-red

(UK, birdwatching, slang) The spotted redshank.


rosy tern

(Yorkshire, birdwatching) the roseate tern.


kingy

From kingfisher + -y (“diminutive suffix”).

Alcedo atthis
Alcedo atthis#Translingual

(UK, slang, birdwatching) the kingfisher, Alcedo atthis.


goldie

Young "baldies" look just like "goldies" and are often shot by mistake.

[…] the golden eagle is the champion predator. And the most handsome, according to ornithologists, who affectionately call their subjects "goldies".

Golden eagles took up old eyries on Hebridean sea cliffs only after the white-tailed sea eagle became extinct. Goldies may hunt seabirds but never fish, and they always resort to flying inland for rabbits or hares as preferred prey.

2009, John A. Love, A natural history of St. Kilda:

Something which is golden in color.
(UK, birdwatching) The golden eagle.

Something which is golden in color.
The golden eagle.

“Each time the golden plover moved, its dunlin attendant followed, but when the goldie flew off to land on a wooden post, it triggered a bizarre cameo.

2005, Mark Cocker, Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica:

Both grey and golden had the folk name "whistling plover" in Britain, but you know from the habitat that Burns must have had the goldie in mind in his line, The deep-toned plover gray, wild whistling on the hill

2009, Jeremy Mynott, Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience:

Dunlins, 'the plover's page', lay their eggs in wetter flows, usually those having a complex of small pools; we often watched the dunlins following the goldies.

2010, Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, Waders: their Breeding, Haunts and Watchers, page 107:

Something which is golden in color.
(UK, birdwatching) The golden plover.

Something which is golden in color.
The golden plover.


tickable

(birdwatching) Of a bird, located so that it may be travelled to and viewed.

On landing the dark forms of the jungle fowl could be seen scattering across the airfield, but we were moving too fast for me to get a tickable view.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 109:

(birdwatching) Of an observation, good enough to ensure correct identification and therefore allow the bird to be added to a list of observed birds.


little brown job

en-noun

little brown job (plural little brown jobs)

(birdwatching, informal) One of any number of small, nondescript, sparrow-like bird species that are very hard to tell apart.


life bird

(birdwatching) A bird species seen for the first time by a birder who is keeping a list of all the species he or she has ever seen.


life list

I added twenty species for the year, fourteen of which I couldn't hope to see anywhere else but Mike forked out a lot of money to come a long way with not a single addition to his life list to show for it.

2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 112:

(birdwatching) A cumulative list of all the bird species a birder has ever sighted and identified.


Sibe

(birdwatching, colloquial) A Siberian crane.


count circle

(birdwatching) A designated radius in which bird populations are measured as part of a census.


twitchable

en-adj

twitchable (comparative more twitchable, superlative most twitchable)

more twitchable (comparative)
most twitchable (superlative)

(birdwatching) Of a bird, able to be visited and viewed by birders.


grip off

en-verb

grip off (third-person singular simple present grips off, present participle gripping off, simple past and past participle gripped off)

grips off (present singular third-person)
gripping off (participle present)
gripped off (participle past)
gripped off (past)

(birdwatching, transitive) To tease or taunt another birdwatcher about a bird you have seen but they missed out on.


commic tern

Sterna hirundo
Sterna hirundo#Translingual

Sterna paradisaea
Sterna paradisaea#Translingual

(birdwatching) A tern that is either a common tern, Sterna hirundo, or an arctic tern, Sterna paradisaea.


gropper

Enjoyed a wide range of Sedge warblers, heard a gropper, and saw a spoonbill, and our first house martins and swifts of the year. The avocets were grand (nearly 50 of them) and not as argumentative as usual at his time of the year.

2001 April 29, Michael J Davis, “A grand day out and request for help”, in uk.rec.birdwatching (Usenet):

These overwhelmingly male gatherings remind me of paparazzi flocks I’ve encountered. Like a reluctant celebrity, the Pallas’s “gropper” (twitchers have their own language, as well as paparazzi-style ripping yarns about this trip or that shot) was skulking in the bushes.

2017 September 25, Patrick Barkham, “Twitchers and groppers: when birdwatching turns ugly”, in The Guardian:

(UK, informal, birdwatching) The grasshopper warbler.


fence hopper

(birdwatching) A bird that has escaped from an enclosure, zoo, or the like, as opposed to a genuine wild bird.


shorb

The first of the rare species of shorb for AZ I started finding this fall was the Semipalmated Sandpiper, an overlooked and overeported species in Maricopa County.

2016 September 10, Caleb Strand, “Fall Madness: Shorebirding And More!!!”, in Birding With Caleb (blog), archived from the original on 2023-11-23:

With it was a much larger curlew species: Long-billed Curlew (the largest regularly occurring shorb in the ABA)

2019 December 20, Jared Conaway, “On The Wesside Feelin Like a Great”, in AK-AZ Birder (blog), archived from the original on 2024-04-12:

Unfortunately people coming back down the beach flushed the small shorb flock but they flew to the golf course and stuck around a bit.

2023 September 24, Mary Walsh, “Archived copy”, in Macaulay Library, archived from the original on 2024-04-12:


seawatching

From sea + watching, after birdwatching.

(birdwatching) A type of birdwatching where participants observe seabirds from a fixed point on the mainland.