Dear all,

Just further to salience (prominent, conspicuous, most noticeable) and
indigenous naming systems. Elsewhere there has been a lot of work done
on the relationship between what species people know, name and
classify and those that are left unnamed - a lot of the work done on
this has identified that many cultures, and there is great variance
within cultures dependent upon such variables as habitat etc, do have
a class of birds that are, to all intents and purposes, unnamed or
unrecognised as being of any economic value.

In my work with Warlpiri bird knowledge in central Australia there are
certainly well-recognised species of economic importance (that are
also classified as 'kuyu'=meat) that are also culturally important -
some of these are large and very salient - Emu, Bustard ad each of
these has several local names and synonyms dependent on context,
location etc.

However there are also a number of smaller species where neither
economic or any other value is immediately apparent.

Good examples of these include the Budgerigar (which the Australian
Museum site credits John Gould with naming (in a European sense at
least) as "Betcherrygah Warbling Grass Parakeet Budgerigar
Melopsittacus undulatus Melopsittacus undulatus
Natives of the Liverpool Plains" - see:
http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/exhibitions/gould/naturalist/indigenous2.htm.
Both juvenile (rich in fat & easy to gather) and adult (easy to catch)
Betcherrygahs (and I haven't checked the modern Eora orthography) are
highly valued food sources here. A similar-sized bird, the Zebra
Finch, has no economic value that I can find but has enormous cultural
significance.

One last thing - of the many honeyeaters out here, I've only been able
to locate names for two species - the Singing Honeyeater & the
Yellow-throated Miner ... though their close relative the Chats all
have the same name...

What does all of this mean? - we need more work on these fascinating
areas.

Have a good weekend and may the sun and wind be at your back and your
birds before you.