Weekword=Ferruginous by Me

Well as always, I am late, but what a lovely word to enjoy for the week. First off, please do visit our other playing friends, Genskie's Written Voices, Mary at No Polar Coordinates
 and Sally at Diario and let them know you stopped by to see their posts on this week's word.

Ferruginous refers to something containing iron or having the distinct color of iron rust. When naming animals and plants, often times descriptive words regarding unique properties, such as color, is used to differentiate them from other similar looking organisms, and ferruginous is a wonderful word to describe a few avian species

Ferruginous Duck

a medium sized diving duck from Eurasia

Ferruginous Hawk

I was lucky enough to see one of these beautiful birds, the largest of the Buteo genus, during a trip to the Mojave Desert in 2005.

Iron is also closely associated throughout mythology and historical medical knowledge with the human body, particularly with blood, the life force of all vertebrates (and some invertebrates) on Earth, and is the most common element composing the Earth in it's entirety. 

In folklore, iron is associated with acting as a ward against evil spirits when an iron horseshoe was hung upside down over a doorway, to fend off faerie the wee folk, and when an iron blade was buried at the entrance of a home, was said to keep witches from entering. Iron was well featured within many of the Brother's Grimm fairytales and is even in the title of one German-based folktale, Iron Hans.

Ferruginous is such a fun word, I do hope you all enjoyed twisting it about on your tongue and playing in some rusty puddles this week. It's been a very very wet week here in Sacramento, and although my backyard is thoroughly flooded, the sun is out and I'm off to enjoy an hour or two of it. I would like to ask Mary Stebbins Taitt to please be our next hostess, and hope you visit her soon for the new word. Happy Sunday!