The other day I flexed some muscle with php scripting and comma separated values. Before you see the results I can safely confess that programming is quite nicht mein Bier, but definitely on the long-term self-development list.

The whole thing ricocheted from an observation, that we often have very little vocabulary about birds. Last month there was a bird nest on the balcony. A new batch of blackbirds, I learnt. In May I freehandedly spied on some woodpeckers. Even megapixel'd pigeons led to some nice discussion on Flickr.

With visual motif at hand it's smooth to communicate, but what happens when we single out a bit more difficult birds and we don't know their names in any language? Then we describe how they look like, sing or behave. It can get quite creative and funny.

After picking up a dictionary it doesn't take long to notice, that the bird names are works of art in themselves. Who came up with Bohemian Waxwing? Certainly no innovation-driven government agency. Nördlicher Raubwürger? That sounds like the worst thing to come since Götterdämmerung. Then again, no (Finn) would probably hurt a vuorihemppo.

This took on a bit of a life of its own, so I started compiling my own trilingual bird lexicon. Just for the sake of the nomenclature. It's simply a table of species names in Finnish, German and English accompanied by each one's binomial name for added scientific precision, if you may. Sensible additions are welcome...

Now playing: Michael Nyman - Bird List