42. Yellow-breasted Eremomela This is another little bird of the hedges – and another first for me. The books say that they like ‘semi-arid savannah’, and this is supported by their rather strange-sounding name. In fact, it is the scientific name, eremomela, and comes from two ancient Greek words: the first part (‘eremo’), from the word meaning ‘desert’ and related to our words ‘hermit’ and ‘eremitical’, and the second part (‘melos’) from the word meaning ‘song’ or ‘melody’ and related to our word, well, ‘melody’. So together this means something like ‘desert song’. The second part of the scientific name is in Latin: icteropygialis means yellow (see ‘icterine’) buttocks or belly (see ‘pygian’). The scientific convention is to derive the genus name from the Greek and the species name from the Latin: together they offer – if only to those who can do both Greek and Latin – a brief description. And indeed, it has been standard to group birds into genera by how they look and behave: that is still the easiest way to identify and group them in the field, and is used by all the guide books. Nowadays, though, DNA studies begin to show that things are a lot more complicated. Birds of AFRICAMA House 88 Birds of AFRICAMA House 89