{"id":104970,"date":"2021-12-12T05:11:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T12:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=104970"},"modified":"2021-12-12T10:52:33","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T17:52:33","slug":"a-question-of-avian-terminology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/12\/a-question-of-avian-terminology\/","title":{"rendered":"A Question Of Avian Terminology"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s confusing.<\/p>\n

When I’m discussing bird characteristics or pointing out field marks for species ID I often have to distinguish between the upper and lower parts of a bird’s beak. Two quick examples would be…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

the tomial tooth (falcon tooth) on the upper part of the beak of a Loggerhead Shrike or…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

the bicolored bill of the Lazuli Bunting (yes, that’s an insect wing stuck to the feathers behind and below his eye).<\/p>\n

In both cases, and many others, it’s imperative to have terminology that distinguishes between the upper and lower parts of the beak (or bill, the terms are synonymous). In most vertebrates the lower jaw or jawbone (whether it’s made of bone or cartilage) is called the mandible<\/em> and the upper jaw or jawbone is called the maxilla<\/em>. As a retired biology and zoology teacher I’ve beaten that terminology into the heads of generations of students and so have countless other high school and college teachers around the world.<\/p>\n

But in birds it’s different, at least usually. Their upper and lower jawbones are covered with a tough, lightweight protein called keratin<\/a><\/span><\/span> and, apparently by convention, that difference called for slightly different terminology. In birds the lower part of the beak is generally called the lower mandible<\/em> and the upper part is called the upper mandible<\/em>. To many of us upper mandible<\/em> seems self-contradictory but apparently it’s here to stay.<\/p>\n

So, the Lazuli Bunting above is said to have a black upper mandible<\/em> and a light blue (often appearing white) lower mandible<\/em>. In birds the upper portion of the beak is typically not referred to as the maxilla (but sometimes it is).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m making kind of a big deal out of this because I often confuse some of my readers when I refer to the upper portion of a bird’s bill as the upper mandible<\/em> instead of the maxilla<\/em>. It isn’t unusual for readers of Feathered Photography, including former students of mine, to question my choice of terms in comments or private emails. It’s time consuming (and sometimes awkward) to repeatedly explain it all.<\/p>\n

So now, whenever someone questions my terminology in this regard, I don’t have to take the time to explain it all again – all I have to do is provide a link to this post. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.<\/p>\n

Just me being lazy I guess.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s confusing.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,569,346],"tags":[6055,6052,4042,133,571,206,5159,6053,306,6054],"class_list":["post-104970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-lazuli-buntings","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-are-beak-and-bill-synonyms","tag-avian-terminology","tag-bicolored-bill","tag-falcon-tooth","tag-lazuli-bunting","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-mandible","tag-maxilla","tag-tomial-tooth","tag-upper-and-lower-mandible"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/lazuli-bunting-2227-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rj4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104970"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104997,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104970\/revisions\/104997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}