Birds, like lightning and thunder, are a phenomenon we mainly observe by two different modes of perception: by sound, and by sight.
It is conceivable a language could have different words for the same type of bird depending on which of these modes it was perceived by; maybe there's a ranking whereby if it's been perceived by both modes, one of them wins over the other. Maybe the mode of perception that is most relevant with regards to the moment wins?
The auditory lexeme might often be somewhat more onomatopoetic, although not necessarily throughout the bird lexicon.
Further, for some birds, it's even conceivable that some of the identities are unknown, i.e. some, most, or even all speakers might be unaware that certain auditory and visual bird lexemes denote the same species, or even that certain auditory profiles belong to the same bird as some other auditory profiles.
Mimicking birds might be ascribed some almost supernatural properties - they carry, maybe, multiple 'aural essences' (thanks Cev!). (Notice that several bird species have had various supernatural associations in religions and other superstitions.)
To go even deeper, maybe certain bird phenomena more often appear as species-specific verbs than as nouns - maybe a flock of whatever birds is expressed as 'it finches' than as 'there's a flock of finches' – birds suddenly share a property with meteorological phenomena. Maybe specifically the auditory bird is a verbal thing, and the visual bird is nominal?
Further, we can imagine things like the arrival of migratory birds and the departure of migratory birds as aspectual forms - inchoative and cessative - of the bird verbs; perception of birds (by whichever mode prefers the verbal forms) is a causative, where the perceiver is the object. So, to hear finches is to be enfinched. Or maybe hearing a blackbird is 'it entwiprrrtwitwetid me', while seeing one is 'it enblackbirded me'.
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