Chough is akin to "Caw," and is therefore imitative.
Jay (older spelling gay or gai) = a bird of gay plumage.
Pie is imitative, and signifies "a chirper." It is probably akin to Latin picus.
Raven = Anglo-Saxon hraefn, probably connected with krap, to make a noise; cf. Latin crepare. The word has absolutely nothing to do with ravenous, &c, which is akin to rapine.
Rook—in Anglo-Saxon, hróc, "a croaker"—is imitative.
Lark is a contraction of lavrock or laverock; Anglo-Saxon, láwerce. In Icelandic there is a word lae-wirki, "a worker of guile," and it has been suggested that lâwerce is another form of this. Should this be correct, it would appear that the Lark must for some reason have been a bird of ill-omen to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
Owl is imitative, and connected with Howl, which appears in "howlet."
Vulture = the tearer (Latin, vellere).
Buzzard, formerly spelt busard, which comes through Low Latin from the Latin buteo—a word used by Pliny to signify the Sparrow-Hawk.
Hawk, "the seizer." Root hab, as in German haben.
Kite probably comes from a Teutonic root skot, "to shoot" or "go swiftly"; and the same root is seen in Scoter, and in the American slang word "scoot."
Falcon, so called from its sickle- (Lat. falx) shaped beak and talons.
Merlin comes, through the French, from the Latin merula, a blackbird; cf. merle.
Osprey is a corruption of ossifragus, "the bone-breaker."
Cormorant is a corruption of Corvus marinus, "the seacrow." The Spanish name is Cuervo marino.
Shag, so called from its crest. It is practically the same word as the Scandivanian skägg, "a beard," or anything that juts out.
Gannet, "little goose." Root gan (as in gan-der) + diminutive suffix -et.
Heron[1] is probably imitative of the bird's cry, and, in
- ↑ The form hernshaw is a variant of heronsew—a word still used provincially, and derived, like many other hawking terms, from the French.
