neddicky

[prettygoodword]

neddicky (NEH-di-kee) - n., a small passerine bird (Cisticola fulvicapilla) of central and southern Africa.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

Not a bad looking dude, but not as handsome as yesterday's. A somewhat acrobatic insect eater. We got the name is from Afrikaans, where it's spelled neddickie, but for the life of me I cannot find where that name came from. If anyone has an etymological Afrikaans dictionary, please help!

Or, yanno, just let us sit here snickering.


And that's a week of snickerbirds -- back next week with more, though none of them will be as, ah, suggestive as this week's. But still silly and sometimes funny.

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

…Good question; neither its “bicycle pump” nor “ticking” (which, to me, suggests a manual typewriter or Morse Code) calls seem to be onomatopoeic for that phrase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0zLxcPcZ7w

Names.org yielded this comment (from an anonymous Japanese, without cites) for the word “Ncede” as a given name: A user from Japan says the name Ncede means "It is a bird also called Neddicky". (Source: https://www.names.org/n/ncede/about)

Circular, perhaps, but it gives us a lead—-which turns up “U-Ncede - A Bird’s Name”(1), by South African acoustic guitar legend Madala Kunene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jGyRuxLvI

At one point (about 2:54-3:13), the lyrics include a “tweet tweet tweet” that could be construed as mimicking the bicycle-pump call. Kunene prefers to express himself in his native isiZulu, so that might be where to look (https://www.rollingstone.co.za/artists/item/3276-madala-kunene)

(1) The song’s subtitle as given here on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/track/1pGTlZq7KLsjxllVwf27qH) is “A Song About How Clever the Tiki-Tiki Bird Is.”

“Tiki-Tiki” is a plausible onomatopoeia for the neddicky’s ticking call, but the Web results overwhelmingly bring up the Disney attraction—-raising the question of who applied that subtitle, and indeed the term (and the perennial issue of the tendency Anglo-diasporic colonizers have to lump all tropical countries indiscriminately into “the jungle“, man”—-note how every Hollywood jungle, regardless of location, is contractually obligated to be inhabited by kookaburras and peacocks.)

[prettygoodword]

That's more clues than I was finding!

Hollywood jungles are the worst.

[full_metal_ox]

From dochermes’s review of The Phantom (a 1943 Saturday matinee serial adaptation of the classic comic strip):

If you have any idea where the heck this serial is supposed to be taking place, please let me know. I'm lost. It's a jungle setting that features lions (and tigers), there's a stuffed gorilla in one trader's office, the natives sure look to me like they're supposed to be South American (maybe Amazon tribes?) and yet a nearby remote city has a leader named "Tartar" who lives in a palace and dresses like some bizarre Central Asian tyrant. I give up. In the comic strip, Bangalla was originally in India (which I greatly preferred, as it gave the Phantom a nice assortment of cultures and locales to romp in, as well as providing plenty of pirates and bandits). At some point, it clearly became Africa and featured the Bandar pygmy tribes. This is not quite as novel, and I imagine there were some heated jurisdictional disputes with Tarzan.

Source: https://dochermes.livejournal.com/1782744.html

[prettygoodword]

Wait, The Phantom was originally took place in India? By the time I was reading it (late 1970s), it was clearly set in Generic Africa. Which was confusing anyway, but I rolled with it 'cuz what does a kid know.

[loup_noir]

Now I want to figure out a way to get out to these exotic lands for a birding trip.

[prettygoodword]

I hear ya!