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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Blue, bold, and brutal—the Verditer flycatcher kills its enemies with kindness

Classified as 'Least Concern' by the IUCN, the resilient Verditer flycatcher maintains a strong presence from the Himalayas to the southern reaches of India.

“Jewel Bird,” my father pronounced confidently, as my sister and I stared ahead at a bright blue, Bulbul-sized bird. With a ridiculously refreshing sea-blue plumage and just a hint of green, the bird has a dark strip extended from its beak to its eye, giving it character. As we stared at it sitting on a shrub much taller than us, it stared back. It was, however, not the “Jewel Bird”. That name appears to have been a spur-of-the-moment invention by my father, perhaps to keep his children entertained and interested in birds. But that moment and the image of that bird stayed with me. Many years later, when I began to watch birds more consciously, I saw it once more, and learned its true name: Verditer flycatcher.

Few birds are as descriptively named as this one. Verditer comes from the Old French phrase, vert-de-terre, which means earth green. Language is dynamic, so by the 17th century, the same word that once implied “earth green” began to mean a synthetically manufactured blue often used by artists of the time. The Latin name for flycatcher, on........

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