Recent news that the NFL Chicago Bears just hired Marc Trestman, former head coach of the CFL Montreal Alouettes, as the team’s newest head coach. This unexpected hire has triggered a number of interesting questions like, “Who knew Canada had a football league” and “How is an offensive mastermind supposed to rejuvenate that aging defense?” But the biggest question has to be, “What the heck is an alouette?!”
Fortunately, we have an inside man, whose Winnipeg Blue Bombers may finally have a chance at the Grey Cup now that Trestman has returned to the NFL. Clare Kines eerily anticipated and answered the question of what kind of bird is an alouette last year. Here’s a hint:
Doesn’t really look like the logo, does it?
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.
‘Alouette’ is the French word for ‘lark’, originally referring to one of the many Eurasian larks of Alaudidae, but it can also mean Horned Lark. Ergo the logo looks kind of like a Horned Lark.
Nice call, Robert. The bird definitely looks more like a Horned Lark.
Sure it is a Horned Lark. There is a French Canadian song about plucking a lark to be eaten: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alouette_(song)
Nobody nowadays would e v e r call a meadowlark an alouette, but Catesby did: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/126524#page/169/mode/1up
Linnaeus simply translated Catesby’s “Large Lark” into Alauda magna when he gave it its first binomial; Vieillot recognized the bird as in fact a blackbird-type and created the genus Sturnella (“little starling”) in 1816.
I’m guessing Trestman knows all this already.
Might be a francomanitoban thing, but my francophone french teacher back home was very specific when he translated Alouette for us back in High school, telling us it was a Meadowlark. I still want to know how in the heck you pluck a beak?
Three things:
1) What rough-and-tumble football opponents would be quaking in their Adidas about having to play the Larks?
2) South Park has apparently failed me, since apparently there are some CFL teams not named the Rough Riders.
3) Wish I had a memory scrub device, like in Men in Black, since I’m now traumatized by what the “Alouette” song is really about. Could be worse, though … at least I don’t speak French.
The 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron, also known as the “Alouette” (which means “skylark” in English), has a unique French-Canadian heritage. Formed during the Second World War, it operated Vickers Wellingtons, Handley Page Halifaxes, and Avro Lancasters, carrying out over 287 bombing raids. Their emblem, “Les Alouettes”, features a lark in flight, and their motto is “Je te plumerai” (French for “I shall pluck you”)12. The squadron’s nickname reflects its special status as the first French Canadian squadron in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Today, they fly CF-18 Hornet fighter jets from CFB Bagotville in Quebec, Canada1.
This why the Montreal football team is call “Les Alouettes” to honor this Squadron.