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  1. jurek

    why coal tit was named "coal" tit?

    Do you drive an automobile or a car? Do you bake in a range? Or in an oven / a stove and the word range means for you reception of a mobile signal? Language changes and much faster than in 50 years. Bird names evolve too, except that birders talk remains a jargon and the official names exist as...
  2. jurek

    why coal tit was named "coal" tit?

    Bird names were often copied between languages (like here from German and English to Czech) which shows that early naturalists often copied knowledge from others rather than discovered themselves, like this not very fitting bird name. It makes ill-fitting bird names even less worth preserving.
  3. jurek

    why coal tit was named "coal" tit?

    Since this thread was revived: Few years ago, somebody else on this forum said that coal was a kind of black face paint used by fashionable ladies in the 19. century and now long forgotten. It supposedly resembled black pattern on the head of Coal Tit and Kohlmeise = German word for Great Tit...
  4. jurek

    why coal tit was named "coal" tit?

    Well, I consulted my reference again ;) : It is a colloquial name, like "tit-mouse" or "Tom-tit" or "Jack-daw". Coal-tit comes actually from "col-tit" or colonel-tit. At the feeder, this brightly and contrastingly coloured bird chasing drab Willow and Marsh Tits resembled a military commander...
  5. jurek

    why coal tit was named "coal" tit?

    "Kohlmeise" means, of course, Cabbage Tit. It is named after cabbage-green back. In Britain there were big influxes of tits in association with cold weather. Therefore, when tits appeared around houses in larger numbers, people knew it is time to warm their houses with coal. (or possibly not...
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