New words for birds: field names vs. identification book

The morning of my first pheasant hunt in North Dakota, I stared at the male pheasant painted on the side of my coffee cup hoping the artist's rendition was true to life. I tried to memorize the exact image so that when a pheasant flushed in the field, I would be able to tell a rooster from a hen, which was illegal to shoot.

"You'll recognize the roosters," my partner's father assured me. "They're bright colored, and they cackle."

I wasn't sure until a rooster flushed two feet in front of me. I didn't hear the cackle but remember well the flash of bright feathers and the outstretched head of a bird that looked as exotic as a peacock to a girl from Alaska who had only hunted brown ducks. During waterfowl season near my home in Southcentral, ducks have not yet molted into their brightly colored plumage, and it is difficult to tell them apart.

While in North Dakota, we also hunted ducks — green-headed mallards and pintails with the elongated central tail feathers they're missing during Alaska's hunting season. These were the ducks pictured in paintings, field books and coffee cups. They tasted the same as the brown ducks back home, but they were the better-looking representatives of their species.

More than one name required

Almost a decade later, I went sea duck hunting for the first time. To prepare, I consulted my bird identification book along with the Kachemak Bay waterfowl regulations. Going by the photos, it was going to be a challenging hunt — the surf scoter and white-wing scoter were both black and white, and I worried about differentiating them on the wing over water.

What I hadn't considered was that bird identification wouldn't be the only challenge. The terminology used in the bird identification book was not the vernacular used in the field. An unquestioned law of the waterfowling world requires that any duck have more than one name.

Over the years, I'd learned that the names invented by hunters varied by region and even by the shared history of a particular group of hunters. It didn't occur to me to agree upon a vocabulary before I became part of a high-seas Abbott and Costello routine in which two characters introduced new names for bird species as flocks flew into our decoys at 30 mph. I could not take a shot until I was sure, and I could not be sure without first clearing up my confusion over the variety of colloquial names for seabirds.

When it came to mallards, pintails, wigeon and teal, my hunting partners called them by their given names. It's possible this was because the ducks we found in Southcentral were all usually shades of brown and did not resemble the names invented by those in more colorful regions, where a mallard was called a greenhead or even green beans and a pintail was called a sprig or tuxedo.

It would not serve us to call a teal a swamp bat or a reed rocket because we did not find them in swamps or reeds but on coastal flats and ponds. We had no reason to refer to a northern shoveler as a smiling mallard, but we did sometimes call him a spoonbill. And we were guilty of calling a lesser scaup a bluebill, even though it is clearly not labeled such in the books.

The originality of names invented for sea ducks in Alaska came to me from boatmen experienced at shooting only drakes on the wing. The late-season sea ducks we hunted were either in their year-round plumage or past molting season.

Scoters or yellow noses?

When the first flock of birds flew into the decoys, which were a gang line of mallards hand-painted to look like surf scoters and long-tailed ducks, I readied my shotgun. Since I could identify the decoys, I figured I could probably identify the live bird. My two hunting partners were seasoned waterfowl experts who promised to fill in the gaps in my understanding.

"Scoters?" I whispered.

"Those are yellow noses," said the boat's captain. I was not sure what a yellow nose was, but I guessed it was a surf scoter because the white-winged scoter had an orange-tipped nose.

They were getting within range, so I mounted my shotgun.

"You don't want to shoot those," the captain said.

"We don't shoot yellow noses?" I asked. But before I could get clarification, another group of three scoters were about to land in the decoys.

"Yellow noses," the captain whispered. I didn't mount my gun, and the birds flew away.

"Why didn't you shoot?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Are we not shooting yellow noses?"

"Yeah, but those were drakes," he said.

Six ducks, 16 names

There are three different types of scoters (surf scoter, white-winged scoter, and black scoter). On this trip, the black scoters were called yellow noses. I'd already heard the captain refer to six duck species by 16 names: old squaws, buffs, buffies, buffalo heads, penguins, fish sticks, salmon-eaters, saw bills, hair heads, flying fish, water turkeys, pterodactyls, goldies, mud hens and lucky ducks or safe ducks, which were any ducks that flew by me.

I was the only person in the boat who called a sea duck the name used in the regulations and feared that perhaps no one shared my nomenclature. I needed to reconcile our vocabularies before the next birds flew in.

"Now, what are you calling a surf scoter?" I asked.

"Those are skunk heads," the captain said. "The white-wings are nikes because they have the white Nike symbol by their eye."

My hunting partner pointed out what appeared to be a bufflehead or harlequin along the shoreline. "That's a no neck," the captain said. I didn't know if he was confirming or arguing the species.

"Is a no neck a bufflehead?" I asked.

"No, a no neck is a no neck because it's got no neck."

"But what kind of duck is it?" I asked.

"It's not a duck," he said. "I don't know what it is."

"Well is that a duck or is it a no neck?"

"Might be a harlie," he said.

I was confused and exasperated. "I'm going to focus on surf scoters," I said. "Please confirm a surf scoter when it comes in."

The captain fired up the motor to move our string of decoys. "What was that?" he asked.

"Surf scoter," I repeated.

He looked up into the air. "No," he said. "that's a raven."

Since that day and thanks to the creativity of those in the outdoors who confer names on creatures they encounter in places rather than on coffee cups, my knowledge of the local names for sea ducks has been expanded. I'm grateful for the force of character and charm of those who shared a day of hunting on their terms and gave me new words for birds.

Christine Cunningham of Soldotna is a lifetime Alaskan and avid hunter. On alternate weeks, she writes about Alaska hunting. Contact Christine at cunningham@yogaforduckhunters.com