Dear all,

Please find listed below the abstracts of papers and posters presented
at the recent Etnoornithology Symposium, entitled "Birds in culture
and context – Ethnoornithology in application and theory", during the
30th Society of Ethnobiology conference at the University of
California, Berkeley from 28 to 31st March 2007.

It was a great day, with a quantity and quality of papers that
reflects the complexity and diversity of ethnoornithological research
being undertaken across the globe at present. I believe that the
symposium participants reflect the global interest in ethnoornithology
as an emerging sub-discipline of ethnobiology and will go a long way
towards stimulating interest in the work of the ERSG and in
encouraging young and emergent scholars and researchers to present
their work at future SoE conferences. (next years will be in Arkansas).

For future reference or to find out more of the work of the Society of
Ethnobiology please see the society website at: http://ethnobiology.org/

I had a great time at the conference and heard some wonderful
presentations and caught up with some old (and not so old) friends and
made a bunch of new acquaintances and contacts. Following the
conference my partner and I(she went to Seattle to do some work while
the conference was on) went to New Mexico and Arizona to see what life
(and the birds) in another desert looks like.

Highlights of the trip? - the conference boat trip to the Farallon
Islands 25 miles offshore from San Francisco, seeing a family of
Harris Hawks (and other raptors) being free flown at the
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum at Tucson, AZ and, of course, a couple of
early morning visits to the wetland habitats at Bosque del Apache on
the Rio Grande outside of Socorro in New Mexico.

Anyway - here are the abstracts - enjoy.

Robert Gosford,
ERSG moderator


Birds in culture and context – Ethnoornithology in application and theory

Chair: Robert Gosford

(1) Introductory comments to the symposium: Eugene Anderson

(2) Mercy Muiruri and Patrick Maundu: Conservation concerns in the use
of birds in cultural ceremonies among the Maasai of east Africa.

The Maasai are a pastoral community in southern Kenya and northern
Tanzania. They still uphold their traditional lifestyle characterized
by ceremonies. The circumcision ceremony, emurata, is preceded by
killing of birds for headgear. Each initiate has to kill approximately
sixty birds of mixed species and keep on replacing spoilt bird skins.
Research was carried out to find the significance of birds in Maasai
ceremonies and conservation status. Birds such as Schalow's Turacos,
Grey Helmet Shrike have been affected perhaps due to hunting, but hard
data on actual causes is lacking. The Maasai do not usually kill birds
for other reasons.

(3) Alejandro Hernández-Jaramillo: So live the birds of Belén de
Docampadó, Bajo Baudó, Chocó- poster

Belén de Docampadó belongs to the municipality of the Bajo Baudó, the
Afrocolombian communities are the owners of these territories,
habitants identified 92 species of the 124 species registered in the
area, 75 represent particular ethnographic aspects, of them 65% was
associated to nutritional uses, 28% to recreation activities, 9% to
activities of "witchcraft" and 8% were associated to origin myths. The
percentage of species with probability of risk of local extinction
corresponds to 15%; that combined to the impact to the timber
extraction demonstrates the necessity to implement alternative
economic viable for the conservation birds and local traditional
knowledge.

(4) Shepard Krech III: Augural, powerful, and dangerous birds among
Indians in the American south.

This paper addresses the salience of various birds in the traditional
native cultures of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Catawba, and
other indigenous people in the American south. The analysis draws on a
book in process, Spirits of the Air, and focuses especially on whether
or not it is possible to arrive at satisfactory conclusions about the
cultural meaning of birds or human-bird relationships among people for
whom, both native people and anthropologists admit, much cultural
information has been lost and might remain forever partial and opaque
due to the ravages of time, language loss, and relocation. Among
birds, the focus is on those that rise to the level not simply of
being noted (by native people) but that figure in important and
interesting, although sometimes inscrutable and indefinite, ways in
the lives of native people.

(5) Robert Gosford: The stormbird cult in the Central Northern
Territory: A migratory cuckoo, aboriginal languages and cultural practice.

The Stormbird (Kurrakurraja, Channel-billed Cuckoo, Scythrops
novaehollandiae) is the largest member of the Cuculidae and is a
significant species in the cultural and ceremonial practices of
several Aboriginal language groups in the north and central areas of
the Northern Territory of Australia. In this paper I will examine
aspects of the cultural relations between Aboriginal peoples and
Kurrakurraja. I will examine naming similarities throughout
Kurrakurraja's migratory range and the particular cultural
significance of Kurrakurraja for one language group in the central
Northern Territory and its role in continental-scale ceremonies across
Australia's Top End.

(6) CANCELED Berioska Quispe Estrada: Ashaninkas, Machiguengas and
Huachipaeris: Environmental relationships of Amazonian communities of
southeastern Peru.

This study illustrates the importance of the traditional knowledge of
three Amazonian communities of the Southeastern Peru, its recovery and
conservation, analyzing the connection between the Amazonian tradition
and the diversity of birds. Taking of data included the coexistence
with the communities and the implementation of surveys. As a main
result it was found that in spite of the cultural and geographical
differences among these groups, it exists in general the same
conception of the ecosystem and mainly of the birds. It discusses in
this study that they have been conserved through the time starting
from this knowledge traditional many species of birds. This supports
the theory that the conservation of the biodiversity of birds is
benefited by the active presence of indigenous communities in areas of
high ecological relevance.

(7) Eugene Hunn: A Zapotec ethnoornithological sketch from San Juan
Gbee, Oaxaca, Mexico.

I recorded an inventory of 69 folk generic bird taxa and a total of
103 terminal taxa for birds in San Juan Gbee, a Zapotec municipio in
the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. I also recorded 190 species of birds in and
near that community during several years of intermittent field work
1996-2003. I will briefly compare this ethnoornithological vocabulary
and its associated beliefs and practices with comparable systems
elsewhere. As seem often the case, small, migratory birds are
relatively poorly differentiated as are larger species that are of
seasonal or sporadic occurrence. Onomatopoeia is common in naming
birds, and certain imitative names are quite creative. Nocturnal birds
are widely feared as ill omens, as are certain wrens that nest in
abandoned structures. Turkeys and chickens are common domesticates.
Curiously, the chicken, a post-colonial introduction, is highly
differentiated by breed, while the turkey, an indigenous domesticate,
is not. A few wild gallinaceous birds are hunted. The sphinx moth is
considered by some to be a "night hummingbird," though others consider
that name metaphorical.

(8) Cecil Brown: Raven=Heron in Mayan Language prehistory: An
ethno-ornithological/linguistic puzzle.

Two very different kinds of bird, ravens and herons, are
nomenclaturally linked in the prehistory of Mayan languages of
Mesoamerica. Reflexes of Proto-Mayan *jooj found in daughter languages
spoken in highland areas denote ravens, and reflexes in daughter
languages of lowland areas designate herons. In the Mayan-language
region, the Common Raven is found in the highlands but not in the
lowlands, and a species of heron that among all regional herons shows
the most (superficial) resemblance to the Common Raven, i.e., the
Boat-billed Heron, is found in the lowlands but not in the highlands.
When ancient speakers of Mayan languages moved from the lowlands to
the highlands or conversely (direction is not definitively known),
reflexes of *jooj respectively shifted in reference from the
Boat-billed Heron to the Common Raven or vice versa. This
nomenclatural switch was based solely on the superficial similarity of
these two extremely different kinds of bird that have nothing in
common phylogenetically other than their birdness.


(9) Nicole Sault: Nicole Sault: Bird Messengers for All Seasons:
Landscapes of Knowledge Among the BriBri of Costa Rica

The rather plain, clay-colored robin is spoken of with affection by
Costa Ricans, not simply for its lovely song, but because it "calls
the rains" at the end of the dry season. Many birds are important for
the messages they send out: predicting the weather or warning about
venemous snakes. However, birds do not simply inhabit the landscape-
they are beings with knowledge that can benefit people in everyday
life, as well as in critical times of change or disaster. People
recognize that this requires paying attention, knowing how to
interpret the messages, and protecting bird populations.

(10) Gregory Forth: Symbolic birds and ironic bats.

Ethnobiologists have long recognized a distinction between `general
purpose' ethnotaxonomies and more specialized ways of classifying
plants and animals. Among the latter is `symbolic classification' (a
term here employed somewhat differently from uses in social-cultural
anthropology). In this paper I apply the distinction of ethnotaxonomy
and symbolic classification in order to consider the conceptual
position of bats, considered as a type of `bird', in the folk
ornithology of an eastern Indonesian society. In a way contrary to the
predictions of Douglas and other anthropologists, chiropertans are
shown to be peripheral to both forms of classification, in a way that
contrasts especially with values attached to both nocturnal and
diurnal birds of prey.

END abstracts