Country diary 1948: Wildlife names that find no place in glossaries

A long-tailed tit chick, probably 12 to 13 days old, sleeps by the nest before returning back inside, Crouch End, London. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

New Year’s Day
My country friends’ names for animals and birds always interest me, especially those that find no place in glossaries or the great English Dialect Dictionary. “Please, mester, I’ve found a twofingers’ nest” said a small boy, and took me to a wren’s nest, which a child’s two fingers can just enter through the hole at the side. In this district it is the children’s usual name, and I have even heard a long-tailed tit called a two-fingered tit for the same reason, although the better known local name is “churn” – an apt one when this tit’s nest is compared with an old-fashioned churn. It is a “scribble lark” that lays the strangely marked eggs in the nest of a yellowhammer, a bird which is also (rather disconcertingly) known as a “goldfinch,” whereas the real goldfinch is always a “nicker.”

“Tom pudding” and “Jack diver” are two charming names used here for the dabchick or little grebe, but one of the oddest is “snadger” or “snadgie” for sparrow, and not the most universal nickname “spadger”; although the word snadger is unknown to the dictionary makers, it is, according to the writer of that delightful book A Pullet on the Midden, also used in south-west Lancashire.

To a real mid-Cheshire man a rabbit is always a “rappit” and in at least two villages a “lappit.” I cannot find any printed reference to the second of these names.