Way back in 2017, when Bird of the Week was just a fledgling gag email, we received our first ever request. Someone asked for North Korea’s national bird. But because I’m incredibly changeable, I decided the bird that really need to be featured was Kiribati’s national bird. But never let it be said that we don’t get around to fulfilling requests, so Hugh, this one goes out to you.
Perhaps ironically, North Korea, that famous hermit state, has selected one of the most cosmopolitan birds in the northern hemisphere to be its standard bearer: the Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) … found pretty much everywhere across northern Europe, Asia and America.
But to be fair to glorious leader, it is a handsome bird that projects power and majesty. It’s also great at killing stuff, which seems like an added bonus for a bomb-toting megalomaniac.
Now, the best Korea isn’t the only nation that noticed our fine friend. If you were to skip over to the Azores and take a gander at their flag you would find the Northern Goshawk again.
Which is strange, because although they are spread all over the world, the Azores is one of the few places where they just don’t live… The word Azores actually comes from the Portuguese açor, meaning Goshawk. It turned out they had misidentified the Common Buzzard, but by the time the mistake was picked up it was too late to change, so they just doubled down and went for it. “Goshawk… what, yeah totally, we meant to do it.”
The word Goshawk comes from the Old English for Goose Hawk and these bids were a great favourite during medieval times for falconry, hence their Latin name gentilis: they were a bird for the gentry. Now, there’s a whole history around falconry, but we’ll leave that as a story for another time.
So to finish up we’ll leave you with a picture of the Goshawk doing its thing.
31/01/2021
Bird of the Week 