IRDS sing, soar and twitch through our landscapes, lives and language. They were probably among the first animals the first humans really noticed and, after noticing, always comes naming. As Susan Myers describes in (Princeton University Press, £30), their names can come from their appearance (raven), behaviour (dipper), diet (chaffinch), habitat (moorhen), other languages (kiwi), geographical origin (pheasant) or similarities (American robin) and some are named for several characteristics at once. Names vary within and between countries and others were long applied indiscriminately. Scientific nomenclature is itself often romantic, as with the rhea, named after the daughter of Gaia and Uranus, alluding to the
