Like most birders I make lists – even birders who claim not to keep lists really do – even if it’s only a mental list. If we didn’t we would never know when we’d seen a new species. Well one of my lists – albeit one I keep mentally – is a list of birds seen from football grounds. This list includes such goodies as Red Kite over Adams’ Park, Wycombe; Turtle Dove at Boston United’s York Street ground and Dipper on the River Don, alongside my beloved Sheffield Wednesday’s, Hillsborough.
This got me to thinking about the strong links between birds and football clubs. Some are pretty obvious, Sheffield Wednesday as we know are nicknamed the Owls. On the surface that might seem obvious – the club emblem is a stylised owl. What may not be known so well is how they came to be The Owls. The owl doesn’t even appear on the City’s Coat of Arms, so where does the name come from? Much to the chagrin of Sheffield United fans we’ve always been one step ahead of them. Sheffield Wednesday, or The Wednesday as they were known originally, played at Bramhall Lane, and were nicknamed The Blades; the current home and nickname of United. The Owls gained their current nickname following a move to the Owlerton district of Sheffield, the Owl only appearing on the club’s badge in the 1930s.
Other clubs have used the owl on their club badge, Leeds United being one of the more prominent. Leeds have had a few nicknames other than the unofficial ‘dirty’ Leeds tag of the Revie era. In fact Don Revie dropped the owl from the Leeds kit as he apparently believed that birds were unlucky. I suppose the superstitious Revie may have had a point as his Leeds team went on to dominate football in the late 60s and early 70s. In fact Leeds United did have a birding nickname – The Peacocks. They weren’t named for their original, gaudy yellow and blue shirts but from the nearby Old Peacock public house which gave Elland Road its original name – The Old Peacock Ground.
Another club to feature an owl, possibly a Long-eared Owl, on their badge are Oldham Athletic. Nicknamed the Latics the Owl comes from the town’s Coat of Arms where the owl features prominently, four times to be precise. It is thought that the owl is a play on the local pronunciation of the town’s name – Owldham.
A lot of clubs get their nickname from their shirt colours. The oldest football league club in the country Notts County were nicknamed The Magpies after adopting their famous Black and White striped shirts in 1890. Prior to this they played in various combinations of yellow and black or brown and pale blue so who knows what they were called then. Other Magpies are of course Newcastle United. One of the most popular nicknames based on shirt colour is The Robins, shared by the likes of Bristol City and Swindon Town amongst others. Without googling the answer how many more Robins can you name?
Interestingly one club that adopted its club colours from an earlier nickname, if not by many years, was Norwich City. The Canaries nickname actually derived from the popular pastime of breeding cage birds in Norwich and the Canary was one such popular cage bird. Funnily enough Norwich City’s original ground was an old chalk pit called The Nest.
A more prosaic club nickname, The Throstles, came from a move to the Hawthorn Ground by West Bromwich Albion. The club badge to this day shows a Throstle or Thrush in a Hawthorn bush. Throstle does appear linked to another football club, non-league Farsley Celtic play at the delightfully named Throstle’s Nest ground. In a similar vein, other clubs to adopt nicknames due to location are Torquay United, The Gulls; Brighton and Hove Albion, The Seagulls and Scarborough, The Seadogs. All three feature some kind of gull on the badge ranging from a much stylised Gull for Torquay to an easily identifiable Herring Gull on Scarborough’s badge.
Cardiff City are also known as The Bluebirds because of their kit and like the song There’ll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover it probably relates to the Swallow rather than any potential nearctic mega-rarity such as Eastern Bluebird. Cardiff City do sensibly have a Swallow on their club crest. Swifts are often mistaken by non-birders as being related to the hirundine family that the Swallow belongs to and indeed Swift has featured in the name of two early Football League clubs, now defunct, that bear no relation to two current League clubs. These being Walsall Swifts, later Walsall Town Swifts following a merger and Burton Swifts. The Swift does still feature on Walsall’s badge but The Brewers of Burton Albion didn’t see fit to keep any historical links. I don’t know of any other senior club, other the Kidderminster Harriers bearing a bird name. There’s no evidence for them being named after any Harrier species.
Swansea City are unsurprisingly nicknamed The Swans and as well as the name contraction their badge has featured a Swan for many years now. Indeed a Swan features prominently in the City’s Coat of Arms. A Swan or to be more accurate a Buckingham Swan is also to be found as the club badge of Wycombe Wanderers. Interestingly Wycombe are nicknamed the Chairboys due to the local furniture industry and to be fair a chair really doesn’t cut it as a clubs emblem, does it?
Most surprisingly given its use throughout history, the Eagle only feature once as the nickname for a Football League club in England. Crystal Palace adopted the name to replace The Glaziers after orders from Malcolm Allison, the manager at the time, in 1973. Outside the league, famous FA Cup giant-killers, Bedford Town are known as the Eagles and now play at The New Eyrie, the old ground – The Eyrie – was lost in 1982. Strangely Bedford have a Bald Eagle on their badge when White-tailed Eagle is probably more likely to have hunted over the area historically.
Apart from straying over Offa’s Dyke twice you’ll notice I’ve stayed with English clubs. When we look north of the border to Scotland only Forfar Athletic have any connection to birding, though it’s likely that their nickname The Loons refers to the local name for lads rather than the Scottish name for the Divers which derives from the Old Norse lōmr which means lame. I’m sure many Forfar fans would feel lame has often been a more accurate description of their team over the years.
The Drunkbirder™ 