Is Language Important?

       Did I need to have a name for the sparrows that frequent our back yard and peck at the grass seed interminably like little bobbing automatons?

       Well, when I decided to shoot them (with my camera) to try to capture that cutely incessant group feasting, I saw in closeup and with zooming in for the first time the distinct black and white stripes on their heads.

       Out with Kimball Garrett, Jon L. Dunn, and Bob Morse's Birds of the Los Angeles Region:  these were "White-crowned Sparrows."

       And I had a name.  An identifier.  Yes, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"...but...I had a name...and that too is important.