ORIOLE /OH.ree.ole or OH.ree.el/ n. a tropical American songbird

The oriole, by which people usually mean the ‘New World’ oriole, is the common name for a large group of birds belonging to the genus Icterus. Interestingly (for some of us at least) ICTERUS is allowed in Scrabble because of its other medical meaning of ‘jaundice’. This fact is doubly interesting because apparently (i.e. don’t take my word for this) the oriole was so-named because, according to Pliny, the sight of one was capable of curing jaundice.

The oriole comes in about 25 flavors (well, species to the taxonomist, but I’m a bit peckish right now). The tasty specimen I’ve singled out in the picture above is called the TROUPIAL (or TROOPIAL if you don’t quite have the right letters), which is the national bird of Venezuela. (The troupial is renowned for being a ‘nest pirate’, but I won’t offend my Venezuelan fans by assuming that’s why they chose it.)

Other birds with fun names that are close cousins of the oriole include the BOBOLINK, the GRACKLE, the COWBIRD, and the high-scoring CACIQUE.

And while we’re talking about birds, now might be a good time to test yourself on some of my earlier avian offerings this month: ERNE, RHEA, and AERIE.

P.S. For Collins/CSW/SOWPODS players, you also get to enjoy playing ICTERID (a member of a family of birds encompassing the orioles) and LORIOT (the golden oriole).

RHEA /REE.uh/ n. a flightless, greyish-brown, three-toed bird, similar in appearance to an ostrich or emu, found in the South American grasslands

I’ve crafted the above definition of today’s word to cover you for just about any crossword clue I’ve encountered for this creature…

• Flightless bird
• Earthbound South American bird
• Three-toed bird of the pampas
• Relative of an ostrich
• Cousin of an emu

It’s always difficult in my Word of the Day to predict which words readers will find common and which they’ll find obscure. To some of you, the rhea might be a bird you see all the time, while you might never have seen, or even heard of, an emu. Being an Australian, for example, I see emus all the time, but I’m not at all familiar with the rhea.

One of the reasons I write an anecdote or two about each word is to make sure that even if you’re disappointed with the head word on any given day, you’ll learn something new in the elaboration. Not always, I realize; but usually. So now let me try to keep that promise today…

The inability of the rhea to fly is due to the absence of a ridged, keel-like breastbone called a CARINA (plural CARINAE or CARINAS). The carina is adapted for the attachment of flight muscles, and a bird with this structure (i.e. a bird that can, in principle at least, fly) is often called a CARINATE.

A bird that lacks a carina (like the rhea, emu, or ostrich) is often called a RATITE. Most ratites have gone the way of the MOA (an extinct flightless bird, formerly found in New Zealand).

P.S. For Collins/CSW/SOWPODS Scrabblers, you might be interested to know that one species of rhea is known (in some parts of the world at least) as the NANDU, which is also occasionally spelled NHANDU or NANDOO.

ERNE or ERN /urn/ n. a predatory sea-bird, especially the white-tailed eagle

It does, however, often pay to know that a bird of prey is sometimes referred to as a RAPTOR, as in [Raptor of the sea] or [Raptorial seabird].

By the way, while investigating this word I discovered a rather handsome Scrabbly extension you might enjoy: VELOCIRAPTOR, a fierce predatory dinosaur. Not bad huh?