The chartered fishing boat churns through the swells due west from the Sonoma coast with nary an angler on board. Birders—sheathed in slickers, binoculars slung around their necks—line the railing. As my maiden voyage begins, cryptic cries erupt around me.
“PECO at ten o’clock!”
“WEGU starboard!”
“BRPE coming in from the south!”
Heads swivel from left to right and back again. Mystified, I turn to the bespectacled man beside me.
“What language are they speaking?”
“BIRD!” he shouts.
“Those are bird calls?”
Never taking his eyes from his binoculars, he rummages under his poncho for a crinkled sheet of paper.
“Here—your cheat sheet.”
I use this Rosetta Stone to decipher, not hieroglyphs, but the standardized four-letter abbreviations that serious birders use for rapid communication and tidy record-keeping. Most combine the first two letters of each word in a bird’s English name: PECO for Pelagic Cormorant, WEGU for Western Gull, BRPE for Brown Pelican. Some names simply compress: BRAN for Brant’s Cormorant, for instance. And there are the odd exceptions, like HEEG for Heermann’s Gull (also spotted on our pelagic expedition).
These codes save critical seconds for birders on land or water. In the time required to shout “Double-crested Cormorant,” a DCCO (pronounced “Deck-o”) might already have vanished into the fog.
“How can I tell the birds apart?” I ask my code-breaking ally.
“Look at their jizz,” he says matter-of-factly—introducing me to birders’ shorthand for a bird’s overall impression: its shape, posture, movement. I begin musing about possible forms human “jizz” might take, but a chorus of honks distracts me.
“A gaggle of geese!” I cry—only to learn that “gaggles” waddle on the ground, while geese in flight form a more elegant “skein.” Brown Pelicans congregate in a “raft” or “pod” on water, but become a “scoop” when flying in formation and diving for prey. Common Murres crowd in “loomeries” on breeding grounds but cluster into a “bazaar” at sea.
In my hometown of Bodega Bay—forever shadowed by Hitchcock’s The Birds—menacing flocks still gather in aptly named groups: a “murder” of crows or an “unkindness” of ravens. I take far greater delight in the sight—and the name—of an “asylum” of loons.
Birds swoop into daily life in other ways. They’ve feathered our language with eagle-eyed spies, owlish scholars, hawkish politicians, and old coots. We brood over troubles, take someone under our wing, crane our necks, watch our hopes take flight. Some scholars speculate that, in a time before time, the rhythms of bird calls and songs may have inspired our earliest ancestors to weave their utterances into human speech.
Perhaps language is our own form of flight—the way we earthbound creatures defy gravity and lift ourselves into the realm of air and song. While our feet remain planted on the ground, our words chirp, call, coo, trill, warble, cluck, chatter, and whistle. Like wings, they can cross great distances and carry the heart through storm and calm alike—our own bright murmuration of meaning.
