Startling blood-red birds surrounded us in the Seychelles. Our guest house was situated on an “Audubon autobahn.” The red blurs zipped in and out of the shadows of the mammoth breadfruit and mango trees, sharing a flight path with the chattering fruit bats.
I asked our housekeeper what the red birds were called, pointing to the nearest one.
“We call that a robin.”
“A robin?” I didn’t believe her.
I asked another woman selling tours to the national park, thinking she should know this intel. She confidently unfolded a weathered brochure and found the bird in question. “Here. It is called a ‘Madagascar body.’” I read the fine print and, indeed, it was a ‘Madagascar body.’
“But,” she continued, “we call this bird a myna.”
“A myna?” I frowned.
For those not in the know, a common myna is a brown, starling-like bird with a distinct yellow patch behind its eyes. Its legs and beak are the colour of Kraft Dinner. It looks nothing like the “body” bird, which has cardinal-red plumage and black markings around its eyes. I wondered, “If locals called this bird the myna,
