Here follows a list of birds. They are not random birds: they all have something in common as well as the strangeness of their names. I invite you to gaze at these names a while, savouring their strangeness, pondering their elusive similarity. To aid the gazing process, I have added ten spoof names to the list; the spoofs are revealed at the end of the Notebook.

Here we go...

Trinidad piping-guan. Blue-billed curassow. White-winged guan. Djibouti francolin. Laysan duck. Madagascar pochard. Campbell Islands teal. Brazilian merganser. Waved albatross. Tristan albatross. Amsterdam Island albatross. Chatham albatross. Galapágos petrel. Magenta petrel. Chatham petrel. Fiji petrel. Beck's petrel. Balearic shearwater. New Zealand storm-petrel. Townsend's shearwater. Muster Mark's gull. Junín grebe. Chatham Islands shag. Dwarf olive ibis. Giant ibis.

White-shouldered ibis. Northern bald ibis. White- bellied heron. Guildenstern's heronshaw. Christmas Island frigatebird. White-collared kite. Madagascar fish-eagle. Red-headed vulture. White-rumped vulture. Indian vulture. Slender-billed vulture. Philippine eagle. Ridgway's hawk. Bengal florican. Siberian crane. Black stilt. St Helena plover. Sociable lapwing. Spoon-billed sandpiper. Kittlitz's murrelet. Chinese crested tern. Large grouse. Grenada dove. Purple-winged ground dove. Early cut. Mindoro bleeding-heart. Negros bleeding-heart. Polynesian ground-dove. Kakapo. Yellow-crested cockatoo. Philippine cockatoo. Malherbe's parakeet. Orange-bellied parrot. Spix's macaw. Lear's macaw. Yellow-eared parrot. Blue-throated macaw. Grey-breasted parakeet. Puerto Rican amazon. Indigo-winged parrot. Sumatran ground-cuckoo. Black-hooded coucal.

Puerto Rican nightjar. Forest owlet. Late-night stone-sub. Chestnut-bellied hummingbird. Honduran emerald. Black-breasted puffleg. Juan Fernández Firecrown. Golden cordon-rouge. Tuamoto kingfisher. Rufous-headed hornbill.

Kaempfer's woodpecker. Araripe manakin. Kaempfer's tody-tyrant. Restinga antwren. Stressemann's bristlefront. Minas Gerais tyrannulet. Royal cinclodes. Bahia tapulco. Tachira antpitta. Masufuera rayadito.

Harding's honeycreeper. Alagoas foliage-gleaner. Réunion cuckooshrike. Rio de Janeiro antwren. Uluguru bush-shrike. South Luangwa mosi. Isabella oriole. São Tomé fiscal. Sangihe shrike-thrush. Caerulean paradise flycatcher. Seychelles paradise-flycatcher. Morning minion. Tahiti monarch. Fatuhiva monarch. Banggai crow. Mariana crow. Raso lark. Taita apalis. Long-billed tailorbird. Blue-crowned laughingthrush. Millerbird. Mauritius olive white-eye. Golden white-eye. Rota bridled white-eye. Munchique wood-wren.

White-chested white-eye. Faichuk white-eye. Iquitos gnatcatcher. Socorro mockingbird. Floreana mockingbird. Puaiohi. São Tomé grosbeak. Bali starling. Mauritius fody. Taita thrush. Cebu flowerpecker. Azores bullfinch. Nihoa finch. Maui parrotbill. Akikiki. Akekee. Akohekohe. Belding's yellowthroat. Montserrat oriole. Gough bunting. Mangrove finch. Carrizal seed-eater. Pale-headed brush-finch. Light-winged dryad. Cone-billed tanager. Cherry-throated tanager.

Better late...

All these birds are officially classified as “critically endangered”. That is to say, we are in genuine danger of losing them. But I do not present this list to make you miserable or guilty or to make you hurry on to another page. The fact is that even birds down to a handful of individuals can be brought back to decent numbers.

This list comes from the Rare Birds Yearbook 2009, published by Birdlife International, an organisation fighting on a thousand fronts against extinction. If you think this is worthy of support, you can join Birdlife International, and/or its partner organisation in this country, the RSPB.

All those strange names, all those birds you may never heard of - plenty on the list I haven't heard of myself - all those perfectly evolved solutions to the problems of living, all thrown into question by human activity. But it's not too late. Only nearly too late, and that is quite a different matter.

(Spoofs: literary: Guildenstern's heronshaw; Muster Mark's gull; morning minion; light-winged dryad. Journalistic: late-night stone-sub; early cut; Harding's honeycreeper. Dipsomaniacal: golden cordon-rouge; South Lwangwa mosi; large grouse)

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