Look closely at a coal tit in Ireland and you might notice something unusual.
The little bird has the familiar black cap, white nape and soft grey-green back of a coal tit, but there is a splash of creamy yellow on its cheeks. It is a subtle difference, easy to miss when the bird is darting between branches, but it tells us something interesting about where this particular coal tit comes from.
Across much of Europe, coal tits have uniformly white cheek patches. The Irish coal tit is different. Here, the white is replaced, at least partly, by a warm, creamy yellow.
This distinctive colouring is one of the characteristics that separates the Irish population from coal tits found elsewhere in Europe. It is recognised as a subspecies, Periparus ater hibernicus, and there is a clue to its identity hidden in that Latin name.
The word hibernicus means ‘Irish’ or ‘of Ireland’. It is a name you will encounter in the scientific names of several Irish subspecies. Sometimes the ending is -hibernicus, sometimes -hibernica, depending on the grammatical gender of the animal’s scientific name.
So, in a way, the coal tit is carrying a tiny reference to Ireland in its name.
It is a lovely example of how scientific names can tell us stories about animals: where they come from, how they differ from their relatives, or what made naturalists notice them in the first place.
And sometimes, the story is sitting there in plain sight, on the side of a little bird’s face.
The Irish coal tit is one of the animals featured in Animals of Irish Name and Origin, a collection exploring the Irish names, origins and stories behind some of the country’s distinctive animals and breeds.
