Four Letter Birds

[cos]

Duck
Tern
Loon
Gull
I'iwi*
Crow
Wren
Coot
Teal
Kiwi*
Lark
Nene
Swan
Smew**
Ibis
Kite
Hawk
Dove
Myna

^* In Hawaiian it's "`i`iwi", and the `okina is a letter, so it's a six-letter bird, but its English name counts as 4 letters.
^** not sure if I've ever seen one in the wild.

Added from the comments: Rook, Dodo, Kaka, Weka, Cock

Bonus list: Four letter birds I found on Wikipedia that I'm not sure I was aware of before:
Kagu
Sora
Rail
Ruff
Skua
Koel
Coua
Iora
Guan

Point of ambiguity: Does "Bird" belong on the list?

Comments

[macthud]

Rook?

[cos]

Indeed, that belongs.

[pax_athena]

I'm not sure about adults, but for a, say, 5 year old, it would definitely belong on the list ;)
And now I'm going to look up what some of these are in German ...

[keshwyn]

Dodo. Which I'm pretty sure you haven't seen in the wild.

[cos]

Only metaphorically.

[elusiveat.livejournal.com]

+1

[elfy.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weka
(not sure if that counts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Kaka)

[cos]

Both count! Good finds!

[(Anonymous)]

I love this list.
-tie

[cos]

I love that you commented! Even better would be if you logged in to your LJ account :)

[kirin]

I've heard of the Skua! But the Smew is new to me, so I guess we're even.

[cos]

I only knew of the smew because Alice had a picture of one and excitedly sent me an email about it a while ago :)

Alice is also the originator of the four letter birds list idea, I think. At least it happened while we were on a flight together and coming up with ideas for lists, and we made our initial list together. I think she was the one who thought of it but maybe I did.

P.S. I suspect I had heard of rails and skuas before, but I had no clear memory of them so I couldn't be sure. And it turns out I'd heard of the sora too, because Alice points out that she put it on the list we made on that flight.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Cock.

[cos]

A crossover from your more traditional sort of 4-letter-words list!

[http://users.livejournal.com/mazal_/]

what about Dodo

[cos]

Already added, from keshwyn's comment on the first day :)