NEW YORK — A group of admittedly “horned-up” and “desperate” ornithologists confessed that the majority of questionable bird names were direct results of their uncontrollable randiness.
“There are three main things to know about ornithologists. We have dedicated our lives to the study of birds, we’re all incredibly horny, and we are all very bad at picking up on flirting and innuendo. The majority of names we’ve invented for various feathered theropods started as failed attempts to hit on coworkers. But they took it at face value and we were too embarrassed to correct them, so the names all stuck,” explained Dr. Nicola Odling. “Great tit, funky American woodcock, rough-faced shag, red-shafted flicker, hoary puffleg. Does that really sound like a list of majestic birds, or crass nicknames and crude sexual acts?”
A previously anonymous whistleblower named Dr. Theresa Adler recently came forward to highlight the depths of the community’s debauchery.
“Ornithology has a history of sexual perversion so sick and twisted it makes those freaky melittologists look like choir boys. In fact, birdwatching originally started in 1901 after a mid-climax Sir Edmund Beswick, founding member of the Richmond Park Ornithological Society, noticed a particularly beautiful goldfinch while getting his old-timey ass munched,” said the anonymous Dr. Adler of Katy, Texas. “This also explains why a prerequisite to earning a PHD in ornithology includes successfully hosting an ‘Eyes Wide Shut’-style orgy, complete with bird masks, BDSM, and random bird trivia. Not sure how that’s still legal, but it’s tradition, I suppose.”
Historian Howard Hobbs pointed out that this phenomenon of down-bad scientists is not limited to the field of ornithology.
“Show me any major or minor scientific discovery of the last 1,000 years, and I’ll show you an act of randy desperation,” explained Hobbs. “Some, like the ‘Big Bang,’ are obvious. But others are more surprising. For instance, the legend goes that Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity after seeing an apple fall from a tree. In reality, Newton was trying to fuck the apple, but it kept slipping off his hog. And the less said about the many, many times Louis Pasteur got caught raw dogging his neighbor’s dairy cows, the better.”
At press time, ornithologists have chosen to use a recent, post-orgasm refractory period to rename the seed-eating dickcissel bird something way less suggestive.