Talk:screecher
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Rfv-sense:
- (dated) A bird of the former category Picariae, distinguished from the songbirds.
The Picariae is a taxon in former bird classifications that is perhaps best described by this text. It consisted of a wide variety of Near passerine orders lumped together using what turned out to be superficial anatomical characteristics. It's not a very common term, and as far as I can tell, only appears with the word "screecher" in one place in Google Books (here). Even that reference only mentions the Picariae as the parent taxon that contains "Cypselus apus"- an old name for the swift, which is our third sense. Even a plain Google search seems to turn up relatively few hits- most of which use our wording, verbatim. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:55, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
- MWOnline has Picariae as nearly synonymous with Coraciiformes
- MW 1913 has it as "An extensive division of birds which includes the woodpeckers and toucans (Piciformes); trogons (Trogoniformes); hornbills (Bucerotiformes); kingfishers, motmots, and rollers (Coraciiformes); and goatsuckers (Caprimulgiformes). By some writers it is made to include also the cuckoos (Cuculiformes) and swifts and hummingbirds (Apodiformes)."
I added the taxonomic orders, ie, they are not part of MW 1913's definition of Picariae, which is quite different from MWOnline's.
Century 1911 has a definition for screechers: "The Strepitores". It is defined much as the definitions that Chuck has for Picariae.
I have 3 mid-19th century cites suitable for a definition that substituted Strepitores for Picariae, including one from an early translation of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom. DCDuring (talk) 04:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)