Names for the Chicks

[burdi]

You sure have a talent for great names and themes TPC. Quite fitting I feel, and I really like each of these names!

Can't take credit for these names I'm afraid.  

Interesting, as I’ve always liked the name Brooklyn as well! It’s nice to hear local students were able to help with naming chicks raised in their area, and I’m impressed with their well thought out theme and names. Great work Green Team! Thank you for helping the Project.

[Kinderchick]

Great names, as usual. 

[The Peregrine Chick]

You sure have a talent for great names and themes TPC. Quite fitting I feel, and I really like each of these names!

Can't take credit for these names I'm afraid.  When the local government office had Green Team students the students used to spend a couple of hours a week checking on the falcons for us (this was before we used cameras) and they got to come up with names for that year.  Some Green Team students dreaded this - the student who named Brooklyn was one of those, it was very cute!  There haven't been students involved for a number of years so the Project took over the naming the chicks.  But because the office has always been willing to help us out when we need it, we always invite the the office to come up with ideas for names - and this year they had a couple of great ideas for a theme and we helped them narrowed it down to one and that's how we got this year's names.  Without the webcam this year, the office has been very generous with their help so it was nice that they could name the chicks! 

[burdi]

You sure have a talent for great names and themes TPC. Quite fitting I feel, and I really like each of these names!

[The Peregrine Chick]

Frankie - after Frankie Manning

Frankie Manning started dancing in his early teens at a Sunday afternoon dance at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem to the music of Vernon Andrade. From there he moved on to the Renaissance Ballroom, which had an early evening dance for older teens with the live swing music of the Claude Hopkins Orchestra.  Finally, Frankie "graduated" to the Savoy Ballroom, which was known for its great dancers and bands.

Competitive as well as gifted,Manning, became a star in the informal jams in the "Kat's Korner" of the Savoy, frequently won the Saturday night contests, and was invited to join the elite 400 Club, whose members could come to the Savoy Ballroom daytime hours to practice alongside the bands that were booked at the Savoy.

Frank Manning's dancing stood out, even among the greats of the Savoy Ballroom, for its unerring musicality. Fast on his feet and with a keen ear, Frankie gave physical expression to the beat, the feel and the excitement of the swing sound played by the great Big Bands.

Frankie was inspired by first-generation Lindy Hoppers George "Shorty" Snowden and  Leroy "Stretch" Jones. However, in order to beat these two great dancers in the intense competitions held at the Savoy Ballroom, Frankie developed his own unique style. He is responsible for many innovations of Lindy Hop step and style, including dancing at a sharp angle to the ground like a track runner, instead of in the upright, stiff ballroom position of his predecessors.  In a famous competition --really, a showdown-- Frankie Manning and his partner Freda Washington out-danced Shorty and his partner Big Bea-- and astonished the crowd of 2000-- with the first Lindy air-step ever done.

In 1935, when Herbert White brought together the top Savoy Ballroom Dancers into a  professional performance group to be called Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, Frankie created the first ensemble Lindy Hop routines. This gave him an opportunity to expand upon his gift for transforming the swing music into exciting dance-movement patterns. When Whitey's Lindy Hoppers were in their heyday, Frankie was the chief choreographer, serving as what we today would call artistic director while Whitey was business manager.

source & videos = http://www.savoystyle.com/frankie_manning.html

[The Peregrine Chick]

George - after "Shorty" George Snowden

George Snowden was the top dancer in the Savoy Ballroom from its opening in 1927 into the early 30's, when he formed the first professional Lindy Hop troupe, the Shorty Snowden Dancers. They performed with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at the Paradise Club downtown through most of the thirties.

Although he was barely five feet tall, Snowden made his height an asset rather than a liability. With comic genius, he parodied himself in his signature "Shorty George" step, in which his bent his knees, swinging from side to side, exaggerating his closeness to the ground.

Shorty's partner, Big Bea, towered over him. They often ended their routines in a comic move in which she carried him off the dance floor on her back. Frankie Manning says that this move inspired him to create his first air step, in which his partner started out on his back and then she flipped over his head and landed on the ground. Ironically, Shorty was defeated by Manning in a major competition when Manning introducted this first air step in 1935. Manning replaced Snowden as reigning king of the Savoy.
Manning remembers his first idol and sometime competitor at the Savoy this way: "Shorty was a great comic dancer who knew his art well, like Jack Benny on violin and Victor Borge on piano.He brought comical moves to Lindy Hop and intricacies of footwork."

Snowden is often given credit for giving Lindy Hop its name. As the story goes, there was a charity dance-marathon in New York City in 1928, shortly after Charles Lindbergh's (known as "Lucky  Lindy") triumphant "hop" across the Atlantic. A reporter saw Snowden break away from his partner and improvise a few steps in a style that was popular in Harlem. "What was that!?" he asked. Snowden thought for a few seconds and replied, "I'm doin' the Hop...the Lindy Hop". The name stuck.

In recent years some writers have challenged the authenticity of the popular story about Short George naming the Lindy Hop. When asked about this, Frankie Manning has said, "All I can say is that I heard the story from Shorty George himself. The other fellas from that time were standing around listening and they didn't say 'Aw, come on Shorty, quit the BS' --- which they would have said if it wasn't true."

source & videos = http://www.savoystyle.com/shorty_george.html

[The Peregrine Chick]

Lindy - besides being the name of this year's only female at McKenzie Seeds, it is also the theme for his year's names = the Lindy Hop.

According to Wikipedia, the History of Lindy Hop begins in the African American communities of Harlem, New York during the late 1920s in conjunction with swing jazz. Lindy Hop is closely related to earlier African American vernacular dances but quickly gained its own fame through dancers in films, performances, competitions, and professional dance troupes. It became especially popular in the 1930s with the invention of aerials. The popularity of Lindy Hop declined after World War II, and the dance remained dormant until revived by European and American dancers in the 1980s.

The origins of the name 'Lindy Hop' are much debated in Lindy Hop communities today.  One account is that "Lindy" was the slang in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for young woman and that "hop" was a term for swing dancing and was used by early Texas Tommy dancers to describe the basic move for their dance.  Another account is that dancer "Shorty" George Snowden renamed the breakaway dance he performed during a dance marathon in 1928 in Harlem.  Fox Movietone News was covering the marathon and filmed a close-up of Shorty's feet and when the interviewer asked him what he was doing, Shorty replied (apparently without stopping his dancing) "the Lindy".  A particularly popular account believed to have been created by a reporter wanting to make his story on Shorty Snowden more sensational was that the dance was named after Charles Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight - "Lindy" was Lindbergh's nickname and "hop" for the staged flights necessary to cross the ocean.

For a much longer & more detailed history on the Lindy Hop = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lindy_Hop

[The Peregrine Chick]

The Brandon Chicks have new names ... and yes, there is a theme for their names this year ...




left to right: George (yellow tape on silver leg band), Frankie (red tape) and Lindy (no tape)

photo courtesy of Dennis Swayze - www.pbase.com/photobydennis

[The Peregrine Chick]

Kelly is on the left, Bogart has his back to us and Spencer is the one in the ladder. 
 

[The Peregrine Chick]

Here are the votes broken down by gender ...

    19% Spencer (Tracy)           12% Kelly (Grace or Gene)
    18% Bogart (Humphrey)        10% Mae (West)
    13% Guiness (Alec)               8% Hepburn (Katharin or Audrey)
    12% Kelly (Grace or Gene)      6% Garland (Judy)
    10% Astaire (Fred)                5% Marilyn (Monroe)

When we banded the chicks we took great care to measure their ankles before we put their bands on.  We had one small male and one larger male and one female.  Because Princess and subsequently Hurricane both have produced small chicks in the past, it will be interesting to see if the larger male survives if it is a male or perhaps a small female.   I had hoped there would be a more even split among the names based on gender but the top 3 names are males, the fourth is for either a male or a female and the fifth based on votes is a tie - one male and one female. So looking at the winners here are the assignment of names ...

Bogart = small male - green tape on his silver leg band

Spencer = larger male - no tape on silver band

Kelly = female - red tape & the largest of the three birds

[The Peregrine Chick]

CBC Manitoba will be holding a Name the Chicks contest to name the 2013 Brandon chicks starting tomorrow morning on the Falcon Cam website.

Voting will last for 1 week.

The theme for this year's names came from the fact that this year's McKenzie Seeds chicks are very photogenic - more photogenic than any of our other chicks in fact.  So, being the little media stars they are, the choices are all famous actors/actress from the 1950s ....

Female Names:

• Garland - Judy Garland
• Hepburn - Katharine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn
• Marilyn - Marilyn Monroe
• Mae - Mae West
• Kelly - Grace Kelly

Male Names:

• Astaire - Fred Astaire
• Guinness - Alec Guinness
• Bogart - Humphrey Bogart
• Spencer - Spencer Tracy
• Kelly - Gene Kelly

When we banded the chicks, we banded two as males, one as a female.  Having said that, one of the male chicks is larger and given that Hurricane was banded as a male, it is possible that the the large male, may actually be a female, but we won't know until/if the chick returns in a couple of years and nests somewhere.