The Lingo

[Gord]

Thought it might be fun and also helpful if a list of birding lingo/slang is created. Ill keep the list current up here though edits but feel free to share more as you think of them.


-FOS (or fos)- First of Season - Used to describe the first of a migratory bird species seen when they arrive back to or on their way to their summering grounds.

Jason saw two fos Nashville Warblers today in his awesome backyard.


-ISO - (International Standards Organisation) - Indicates the sensitivity to light of a digital camera's light sensor. ISO of 100 is less sensitive to light than an ISO of 400. However, the higher the ISO, the more grainy the photo. Formerly known as 'ASA' in film cameras.

Due to the low light of the evening, I had to use a high ISO to capture the image of the Harris's Sparrow.


-Jizz - The characteristic features of a bird which distinguish it from other species that resemble it that enable persons familiar with the species to identify it or have a strong hunch as to it's identification.

The feeding style and body proportions of that distant bird has a strong jizz of a Yellow-rumped Warbler


-Pish ('pishing', 'pished') - A series of sounds made by a birder to attract some species of songbirds. The sound is similar to a shushing sound like one perhaps made in a movie theater to quiet someone ("Pish, pish pish pish...")

"I pished out a Song Sparrow from the blackberries."


-RBA - Rare Bird Alert


-Twitch ('twitching', 'twitched') - To travel, sometimes great distances, to see what is often a rare bird species that you wish to mark on your bird list.

"Thor and Murray traveled to Vancouver Island to twitch the Black-throated Blue Warbler."

[mac]

Great idea Gord!
How about:-

Jizz

"The characteristic features of a bird which distinguish it from other species that resemble it."

[Gord]

Good one Mac.

Did my usage of it in a sentence work? Ive heard the word before but never used it myself.

Keep them coming!

Im always on the lookout to ensure the site is all inclusive. It might be a little daunting for someone possibly newer to birding to read something like... "After seeing the RBA, I twitched out to see if I could pish the bird from the bushes and confirm if it indeed had a Yellow-breasted Chat jizz to it..."

[Deleted]

Hi, guys.

Never one to pass over the opportunity to stir up a bit of controversy, I question this definition of jizz. I'm going out on a limb here, but my impression has always been that this term refers not to the sort of characteristics that correspond to the physical description in a field guide, but rather to the general impression one has in one's head of a species after observing it in action, its movements, habits, quirks, etc.

I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that the term jizz is a derivation of "g.i.s.s.," for "general impression of size and shape" which was supposedly coined in reference to the process by which experienced observers could identify very distant aircraft during the war in Europe, not by details of marking etc, but by general impression growing out of experience.

Whether this is truth or only legend, there are times when birds are identified in the same way. Seeing a facial pattern like a certain species of sparrow and identifying it on that basis would not be using jizz, but an experienced birder glimpsing a sparrow scurrying around on the ground in desert scrub and calling it a Sage Sparrow without seeing its field marks, in a way that a beginner or someone unfamiliar with the way Sage Sparrows act could never do, would be a tentative ID based on jizz.

I'm sure most of us have been amazed by someone who could identify a distant raptor by its jizz when it was so far away we could not pick out any of the standard field marks.

At least that's how I've come to understand it from the way I've heard it used.

Like I said, I'm sticking my neck out here, by deliberately not looking the term up in a dictionary or whatever first before shooting from the lip.

Feel free to disagree, anyone. I could very well be wrong.

Stan

[murraybrown]

I think you've nailed it Stan. At least the way I have read about it and heard it used.

Murray

[Lynn Miller]

Hi Stan,

The first time I came across the term "jizz" was in Harrison's book, "Seabirds, An Identification Guide" and it was explained in much the same way you describe. It goes beyond the physical traits of a bird, i.e. colour, field marks, etc. and means to denote behavior patterns such as flight attitude, feeding, tail wagging, etc.

Lynn

[Wetlander]

Stan, thanks, I wondered about that one...

Hey Gord, I would like to coin a phrase....

"GeeGee"
To find rare birds, seemingly at will ;D

"I GeeGeed an Ivory-billed on the weekend."

Sorry, I couldn't resist

[Gord]

Good thoughts on 'jizz'. I wonder, however, if it means something slightly different from where Mac possibly could have brought it from Europe. There, a Loon is a 'Diver', a Longspur is a 'Bunting' and a Robin is a true Robin!

;D ;D Wetlander! It's all good until my streak of being in the right place at the right time runs out!

[Wetlander]

I've been thinking about the term for observing or photographing birds. Checking out photos on-line the terms are "great SHOT", "great CAPTURE" etc. I realize that camera terms are often based on hunting terms, but personally this just seems wrong for birding.

Reminds me of the character Holling from the TV show Northern Exposure. He was a retired hunter who would no long kill. But he mounted his camera on a rifle stock so he could still "bag" his prey. If I remember correctly he was after an Orange-crowned warbler in Alaska. Any way, just musing about the way hunting has coloured the language of birding.

I noticed Gord use "nice FIND", certainly more positive... like prospecting and striking gold... a sense of discovery without the need to kill or control.

But I think I'm still looking for "le mot juste".

[Gord]

Im pleased you like the FIND verbage!

Funny about the rifle stock. I mad one for my camera too for places where packing a tripod is not good. Helps with a bit of stability.

I added a bit in the lingo on cameras.

[Wetlander]

Of Course!!! Birders deal with some long lenses and the rifle stock trick would work.

[Deleted]

Hi, folks.

The Whatcom County bird line had a feature posted this morning, and I thought it might be relevant to the discussion we had in January about the meaning of "JIZZ." It debunks one aspect of what I wrote then.

Here it is, for whatever it's worth:


Word of the Day

Jizz (noun)
Pronunciation: ['jiz]

Definition: The immediate, characteristic impression given by an animal or plant.

Usage: This word is commonly used among birdwatchers to denote the quick, transient but unmistakable "look" of a bird, which is assimilated by the experienced birder during the merest glimpse of the creature as it flits past. It is an informal English-language equivalent of the German loan-word "gestalt," which means "shape" or "form" in German, but which in English has taken on the complex sense of "an object of perception that forms a whole or unity, and is inexpressible simply as a sum of its parts."

Suggested Usage: The experience of recognizing something in an instant without understanding how you do it is a common enough experience, so this word deserves wider usage. "I tell you, she was walking a fox on a leash—it was like seeing a dog with the jizz of a cat." When you recognize an old friend who is walking away from you on the far side of the street, you are responding to his jizz - why not tell him so? "Leo, since you had that bad haircut and the surgery on your knee, you have developed a unique jizz."

Etymology: The story goes that this word originated in a form of aircraft-recognition practice, common among fighter-pilots during World War II. The pilots were given brief glimpses of silhouetted models of enemy and friendly aircraft, and gradually developed the ability to tell friend from foe quickly and reliably. The gestalt impression thus formed was called "General Impression of Shape and Size"—abbreviated to GISS and pronounced "jizz." Unfortunately for the story, the pronunciation seems implausible (why not "giss" or "jiss"?), and English-speaking fighter pilots of the appropriate era deny knowledge of the acronym. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary finds "jizz" in bird-watching use well before the war, but sheds no light on its true origins.

–Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com

[Gord]

Stan, a very excellent read with excellent supporting sentences!! Love it. Thanks for sharing. I believe this is what I mean when I use that term.

New term included above and slight modification to the jizz term.

[kenpossum]

Photographic terms can be even worse than "shot" and "capture" as Wetlander noted. We are careful not to "amputate" our subjects. That refers to portrait photographers cropping a photo at the body joints such as knees, elbows, ankles and fingers. For birding, the same would apply ie. try not to amputate at the crane's knee joints. We may also refer to an image as being "well executed" and a spent roll of film or a full memory card as "killed". Hmmm thinking of Henry VIII are we? What does the movie director yell when the scene is over? "Cut!". I know there are more terms like this, but these just came to mind. I suppose we can be a nasty bunch.

Now on the other shoe - Who came up with the term "a murder of crows"? It wasn't us photographers!




Ken Pugh

[Gord]

HA!

Good terms there though. Amused at the last few. No idea who did the name for crows. A mystery like belly button lint I guess.