WHEN YOU TRAVEL to different countries or different places in this country, it’s easy to pick up local slang.

After two weeks of birding in England, I began using some of the Brits’ bird-watcher expressions.

A column featuring this trip earned me a call from my editor.

“I don’t recognize the word ‘jizz.’ ”

I thought I had successfully defined it for him, but Bob was adamant.

“You’ll have to change it.”

Bob Mottram was one of my all-time favorite editors. That’s saying something because I’ve had some great ones over the years. I was disappointed I couldn’t get him to change his mind.

That was a few decades ago. Now, jizz is widely recognized among this country’s birders.

To understand its meaning, think of a familiar bird you easily. You recognize it by its jizz.

That’s what you are doing when you say something like, “It looks like — or it acts like a robin.”

When I saw my first “blackbird” in Australia, my instinctive reaction was, “That’s a black robin!” [ . . . }

Read More at: BIRD WATCH: Size, silhouette and all that slang | Peninsula Daily News