According to Francesca Greenoak ("All the Birds of the Air") the word Kestrel comes from the Norman French crecelle meaning a rattle, and is probably imitative of the bird's kee kee kee alarm call. Other local names are based on the bird's characteristic hovering, windhover being one of the commonest.The island of Hilbre in the Dee Estuary in Cheshire has a bird observatory which I used to visit regularly whenever I was on Merseyside. The obs guru was Professor John Craggs, who, over the years, had given names to the various features of the island, one of which was "Kestrel Hollow" after a depression in the ground some distance from the obs. Parties of dudes, mostly blue-rinse ladies, would visit the island, and invariably found the name "Kestrel Hollow" to be very sweet. What they didn't know was that Prof Craggs had given it that name after coming upon a young couple in flagrante delicto: another local name for the Kestrel is fuckwing....
1 comment:
I have heard that a traditional English name was "windfucker" which sort of makes sense if you see one hovering into the wind...
Post a Comment