Penelope

We have a resident flock of wigeon, or widgeon, that make their living grazing the grasses on the local salt marshes. They enjoy what is, to my mind, a particularly beautiful scientific name - Anas penelope. Their beauty is best appreciated through the telescope.

I used to think that they were named after Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, who keeps her suitors at bay in his long absence and is eventually reunited with him. Sadly the truth is rather more prosaic; Anas is the Latin for duck and penelops is the Greek for a kind of duck! Still, it is a stunning name even it does translate as "duck duck"!