Shoebill (not birb)

December 12, 2019 4:32 PM

When Is a Bird a ‘Birb’? An Extremely Important Guide by Audubon.
posted by Anonymous (43 comments total)

> Little waders like the Green Heron are in, but the Great Blue Heron? Sorry, not a birb.

Dems fightin' words, friend.
posted by endotoxin at 4:34 PM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I do think they brushed up against the exceptionary rule, but didn't quite stick the landing. Adding murder to birb definitely includes brain-eating tits... but you could also call a cassowary a murder birb, and that would be taxonomically correct. In fact, I think you could call most small dinosaurs that explicitly resemble ostriches/emus/cassowaries murder birbs, and expand the category historically, as well.
posted by headspace at 4:40 PM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["birb"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it
posted by Reyturner at 4:43 PM on December 12, 2019 [12 favorites]

I love this.
posted by obfuscation at 4:44 PM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think murder birber is the correct term.
posted by aubilenon at 4:45 PM on December 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

Are you sure it's not the correct Tern?

Sorry,
I know the way out by now...
posted by evilDoug at 4:54 PM on December 12, 2019 [23 favorites]

What are birbs? We just don’t know.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:55 PM on December 12, 2019 [23 favorites]

Are you sure it's not the correct Tern?

Sorry,
I know the way out by now...

BOOOOOOOOOOO

yaaaaay
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:59 PM on December 12, 2019 [8 favorites]

I think a big scary bird is a birbo. Picture it. Is an ostrich a birbo? Yes. Is a shoehorn bill a birbo? You know it's true.
posted by bleep at 5:04 PM on December 12, 2019 [13 favorites]

I guess a collection of crows is, then, a murder of non-birbs? amidoingitrite?
posted by kaibutsu at 5:15 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Are you sure it's not the correct Tern?

Sorry...

Sorry myself, but that's not a Tern I can leave unstoned.
posted by jamjam at 5:16 PM on December 12, 2019 [16 favorites]

They're good birbs, Bront.
posted by tclark at 5:24 PM on December 12, 2019 [12 favorites]

What are birbs? We just don’t know.

I mean, the related stories made it very clear as far as I'm concerned that birbs are in fact a government conspiracy.
posted by Sequence at 5:26 PM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Birb of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
posted by toastedbeagle at 5:28 PM on December 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

Rule 1: Birbs are often (though not conclusively) small.

No they’re not; birbs are smol.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:36 PM on December 12, 2019 [33 favorites]

I love this.
posted by Mchelly at 5:40 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

The big murder ones are herks, duh 🙄
posted by supermedusa at 5:54 PM on December 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

I have birb
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 5:55 PM on December 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

birb
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:01 PM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm sort of simultaneously in awe of and embarrassed for the National Audubon Society for publishing this (surely there's a German word for that). I think it's great, but very dad jokey and attempting to be relevant. I'm conflicted.
posted by mollweide at 6:13 PM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

I dunno, I think the article nails it.
posted by obfuscation at 6:16 PM on December 12, 2019 [8 favorites]

I have rescued
the birbs
(why were they in
the icebox)

and which
you were probably
saving
for OMG WHAT

Forgive me
they were small and
round
and so cold
posted by bendy at 6:16 PM on December 12, 2019 [24 favorites]

I think the term you're looking for, mollweide, is "How do you do, fellow kids?"
posted by darksasami at 6:17 PM on December 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm sort of simultaneously in awe of and embarrassed for the National Audubon Society for publishing this

I saw that too... something like "this is funny but aren't they better than this?"
posted by bendy at 6:19 PM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Exactly the kind of corporatist co-opting of organic trends that we've come to expect from the industry lobbyists of Big Birb.
posted by allegedly at 6:33 PM on December 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

This is really great. Lots of fun sentences:

If the Pileated Woodpecker didn't lose its birb status under Rule 1, it does now

Swans and geese have solidified a reputation as terrors, and are worryingly big besides.

Also, I mean, it's a fun little fluff piece, sure, but I love examining the ways our brains categorize things (is it jazz? is it country music? is it a sandwich? is it a pie?) - especially when the category itself is less than a decade old. (Which they discuss in the last paragraph, with a concluding sentence I wholeheartedly support.)

Also, as an extremely casual bird-watching type person, I had never heard of Elf Owls, and now I have!

This is great fun. Thanks for posting it, stoneweaver!

(Also: did everyone else get the miffed-looking little blue bird on the Buzzfeed link in the Related widget below the article? What a great birb!)
posted by kristi at 6:35 PM on December 12, 2019 [12 favorites]

i.m becam obsess with birbs from birb game
posted by demonic winged headgear at 7:12 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

is it jazz? is it country music? is it a sandwich? is it a pie?

It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:55 PM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

My Senegal parrot, Turtle Bird, is a shapeshifter. When she wants cuddles and scritches, she gets rounder and smaller and cuter and, voila, she is birbness incarnate.

When, however, she spies The Most Despised Thing (a hat of any description) she flattens her feathers and cranks back her spring-steel neck to become Fearsome Murder Dragon with a can opener for a face. Definitely not a birb.
posted by kinnakeet at 8:57 PM on December 12, 2019 [26 favorites]

My usage is

birb: a bird, any bird
borb: a very round bird
posted by egypturnash at 9:16 PM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

birb: a bird, any bird
borb: a very round bird

beeb: a name, I call my bird
baab: a long long neckèd bird
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:44 PM on December 12, 2019 [28 favorites]

This is appropriation. Someone call birb rights activist.
posted by praemunire at 9:45 PM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

This is utterly delightful, thanks for sharing!
posted by AV at 10:46 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Entertaining and informative. Nice.
posted by evilmomlady at 4:27 AM on December 13, 2019

I wish Wittgenstein were still alive so he would have to deal with this.
posted by srboisvert at 4:43 AM on December 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

Are you sure it's not the correct Tern?

Just don’t take a tern for the wurst. It never ends well.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:56 AM on December 13, 2019

I'm not sure I buy that the division is based on species. Rather, I think the dividing line is behavioral: any bird doing something cute is liable to be called a 'birb'. (Even ravens, which the article would classify as non-birbs, will get called birb if they're doing something sufficiently cute).
posted by Pyry at 5:37 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Any bird that's not a birb is a brid in my world.
posted by SinAesthetic at 10:16 AM on December 13, 2019

birb birb birb
birb is the wirb
posted by exogenous at 10:58 AM on December 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

praemunire, the article explicitly credits the Birds Rights Activist Twitter account with originating “birb”!
posted by snowmentality at 2:42 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

all birb is birb, even stampy tallboi snek-murder birb.
posted by scruss at 6:30 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Shoebill has been upgraded! It's now (somehow birb) under the muppet clause.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:14 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

birb: smol round bird
herk: big spiky murder bird

bouba/kiki effect?
posted by marakesh at 4:00 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]