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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
It is a truism to say that the study of ornithology has made great advances in the last fifty years, and that important problems affecting the classification of certain species and their distribution have been brought much closer to solution. Classical scholars, however, still tend to rely on the identifications of ancient Greek bird-names made by a few standard works such as D'Arcy Thompson's A Glossary of Greek Birds2 (1936) or O. Keller's Die antike Tierwelt (1909), apparently unaware that much of the ornithological information given there is now badly out of date, if not sheerly inaccurate. This brief paper aims protreptically to take four bird-names out of the Peripatetic corpus on natural history: 
and 
and to produce more precise identifications in the light of modern ornithological studies.
page 335 note 1 e.g. Sundevall, C. J., Die Thierarten des Aristoteles (Stockholm, 1863), p.121Google Scholar; Aubert, H. and Wimmer, F., Aristoteles: Tbierkunde (Leipzig, 1868), ad loc.; Thompson, Glossary, s.vv., and in the Oxford translation, ad loc.Google Scholar
page 335 note 2 Peterson, R., Mountfort, G., Hollom, P. A. D., A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe 3 (London, 1974), p.281.Google Scholar
page 335 note 3 Witherby, H. F. and others, The Handbook of British Birds, i (London, 1940), 235.Google Scholar
page 336 note 1 On the present status of the two tree-creepers in Greece, see especially Kanellis, A. and others, Catalogus Faunae Graeciae: pars II, Ayes (Thessaloniki, 1969), pp.136 f.Google Scholar
page 336 note 2 e.g. Sundevall, , Thierarten, pp.139 ff.Google Scholar; Aubert and Wimmer, ad loc.; Thompson Glossary, s.v., and his translation of Aristotle's HA, ad loc.; Keller, , Die antike Tierwelt, ii. 156 ff.Google Scholar; Gossen, in RE s.v. Rebhuhn, 348 ff.Google Scholar
page 336 note 3 Cf. also [Aristotle, ], HA 9.614a21 ff.; and Athenaeus, 9.390a ff.Google Scholar
page 336 note 4 Cf. especially Watson, G. G., Ibis 104 (1962), 353 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Evolution, 16 (1962) 11 ff.Google ScholarReiser, O., Materialien zu einer Ornis balcanica: Ill, Griechenland and die griechische Inseln (Vienna, 1905), pp.406 ff., is also very useful.Google Scholar
page 336 note 5 This discussion ignores the common partridge (Perdix perdix), because today it is an exceptionally rare bird in Greece (Kanellis, , pp.55 f.), and even before the modern decimation of such game birds by savagely excessive hunting the evidence suggests that it was never a well-established species.Google Scholar
page 336 note 6 Watson, locc.citt.
page 336 note 7 Watson, locc.citt.
page 336 note 8 Löhrl, H., Vogelwelt, 86 (1965), 106.Google Scholar
page 336 note 9 Steinfatt, O., Journal für Ornithologie, 96 (1955), 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 336 note 10 Cf. also Aelian, , NA 3.35Google Scholar; Antigonus Car. Mir. 6.Google Scholar
page 336 note 11 Dr. K. Borthwick reminds me that there is a similar variation between Babrius 131.7 and Lucian, , Tim. 21 in their attempts to reproduce phonetically the call of hirun dines; Babrius uses
Lucian
Google Scholar
page 337 note 1 Because of these patterns of distribution, however, it is fairly safe to identify the partridges on the Caravanserai frescoes at Cnossus (Pendlebury, , Handbook to the Palace of Minos (London, 1954), pl. xii and p.68)Google Scholar as chukar partridges: This is perhaps of only minor significance, but Dr. E. K. Borthwick draws my attention to a further point equally consequential upon the patterns of distribution of chukar and rock partridge, yet of considerably greater importance to the literary historian. It concerns the controversy about the birthplace and original nationality of the poet Alcman. Recent opinion (e.g. Page, D. L., Alcman, The Partheneion (Oxford, 1951), pp.167 ff.Google Scholar, Treu, M., in RE Supp. XI (1968), 23 ff.Google Scholar; Cuartero, F. J., Bol. Inst. Est. Helenicos, Barcelona, 6 (1972), 3 ff.Google Scholar; Balasch, M., Emerita, 41 (1973), 309 ff.) inclines to the view that Alcman was a Lydian from Sardis, not a native Spartan. Dr. Borthwick acutely observes that Alcman's use of the word
(fr. 39 Page) to denote “partridges” may henceforth be adduced as a supplementary piece of evidence for the view that the poet grew up in the chukar belt (of which Lydia forms a part), and not in that of the rock partridge (which would include the mainland of the Peloponnese).Google Scholar
page 337 note 2 e.g. Sundevall, , 128; Aubert and Wimmer, ad loc.Google Scholar; Keller, , ii.50 ff.; Thompson, Glossary, s.v., and translation of Aristotle, ad loc.Google Scholar; Steier, in RE s.v. Specht, 1546 ff.Google Scholar
page 337 note 3 Löhrl, , p.107Google Scholar; cf. Reiser, , pp.302 ff.Google Scholar
