Finally: the Pill for the Birds?

Well, I am back home and thus - as I have mentioned before - back on my blog as home is wherever you can access your blog.

And boy, do I have stories to tell.

Of course, whether I will ever tell them here is a matter of time and thus improbability, but at least the stories are in my head and might one day make it through the keyboard onto your computer screen - we'll see.

Now just a thought I recently had (I call thought what you'd call folly, just in case you forgot) which is entirely unrelated to anything that happened in the past few weeks but might be as worthy of your attention as the rest of the blog is or not.


Is the Pileated Woodpecker pronounced Pile-e-ated or Pill-e-ated?

I have always been a firm supporter of the Pile-way, yet recently during one of those stages in between being awake and asleep, when the mind wanders to contemplate wondrous wonders, the following line of arguments suddenly appeared and I was actually able to hold on to it and remember my reasoning on the subject the next morning.

The problem with the Pile is the "e". If the Pile-part of Pileated was pronounced "pile", the "e" would not be free to be separately pronounced as a follow-up syllable and the bird would be called a Pile-ated Woodpecker.

Yet as much as birders tend to disagree over the pronunciation of the bird's name, all the fighting and fuzzing is about the first syllable. There is mutual agreement that there is a drawn-out "e" at the bird name's centre. Or, put more plainly:

[Pile/Pill]-e-ated Woodpecker

You see that central "e"? Completely undisputed.

However, if we reserve the "e" to form the second syllable, we are left with a "Pil", which would then be pronounced as in "Pilgrim" or more pleasingly "Pils".

So, following this line of argument, it seems I'll have to pitch my tent in the Pill-e-ated camp for the time being, which will take some time to adapt to. Time, of course, is certainly not of the essence to me right now as a Pileated Woodpecker is as far away from my home spot here in Germany as can be. Nevertheless, I take this moment of revelation and its linguistic challenge as an invitation by the Big Power Of Birding Fate to re-visit the bird's realm in North America.
The "when" and "how" is something that has as yet not been resolved, but the pure need itself has been recognized as a matter of inevitable fact.