Jizz or giss is the overall impression or appearance of a
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
garnered from such features as shape, posture, flying style or other habitual movements, size and colouration combined with voice, habitat and location. The concept was popularised in
birdwatching
Birdwatching, or birding, is the observing of birds, either as a recreational activity or as a form of citizen science. A birdwatcher may observe by using their naked eye, by using a visual enhancement device such as binoculars or a telescop ...
, but is so useful that it has since been adopted increasingly widely by field biologists in referring to the impression of the general characteristics of other animals.
It similarly appears in such fields of observational biology as microscopy.
Ecologists and botanists may speak of "habitat jizz" or the jizz of a plant.
Sean Dooley
Sean Dooley is an Australian writer. He has written for TV comedies including '' Spicks and Specks''. His first published book was 2005's '' The Big Twitch'', an account of his attempt to break the Australian record for the number of birds seen ...
described jizz as "the indefinable quality of a particular species, the 'vibe' it gives off" and notes that although it is "dismissed by many as some kind of birding alchemy, there is some physical basis to the idea of jizz."
Experienced birders can often make reliable identifications in the field at a glance by using jizz. Often jizz is useful for identifying to the
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
or
genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...
level, rather than the
species
A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
level, as in: "It definitely had the jizz of a thrush, but I couldn't see what kind."
Etymology
The term was first used in print in 1922, in the ornithologist
Thomas Coward's "
Country Diary" column for ''
The Manchester Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' of 6 December 1921; the piece was subsequently included in his 1922 book ''Bird Haunts and Nature Memories''.
He attributed it to "a west-coast Irishman",
and explained:
concludes that the term was further popularised by its use by Miss E. I. Turner, "a popular author", in the journal ''Open Air'' in 1923.
There is a theory that it comes from the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
RAF acronym GISS for "General Impression of Size and Shape (of an aircraft)", but the use of the term in 1922 precludes that.
Another theory is that jizz is a corruption of ', a German word that roughly means form or shape.
Other possibilities include the word ''gist'', or a contraction of ''just is''. These theories were debunked by the ornithologist
Jeremy Greenwood and his brother Julian in 2018.
References
External links
Texas Park and Wildlife Department – Project Prairie Birds – JIZZ Descriptions and Alpha Codes for Selected Species
* ttp://canberrabirds.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CBN/cbnvol21no1.pdf McDonald, D 1996, 'The etymology of jizz', ''Canberra Bird Notes'', vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 2–11.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jizz (Birding)
Birdwatching
Wild animals identification
1920s neologisms