How come the Isabelline Wheatear and Isabelline Shrike were so named? Birder-writer Stephen Moss responds

                               

Isabelline Wheatear - scarce autumn visitor to Britain

THE recent arrival of relatively rare Isabelline Wheatears on the Spurn peninsula in Yorkshire, Donna Nook in Lincolnshire and probably elsewhere has prompted speculation about how it( and the Isabelline Shrike and Isabelline Bush-hen) might have become so named.

In his book, Mrs Moreau's Warbler - How Birds Got Their Names, Stephen Moss acknowledges the theory that somehow it might be associated with 16th Century Queen Isabella of Castile, but is unpersuaded.

He writes: Isabelline is more likely to be a corruption of the Italian word, zibellino.

"This name was given to a pelt of an animal, such as a sable, worn as a fashion accessory by wealthy women of the time.

"It may originally derive from an Arabic word meaning 'lion' and therefore mean 'lion-coloured'."  

* Photo: Shino Jacob Kootand via Wikimedia Commons