(SF)

Original story here

Twitchers are in a flap as cocks are banned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds but tits are OK.

The word, which has been used for centuries to describe a male bird, comes up as four asterisks on the charity's website forum where bird watchers chat about their latest sitings.

On user who found his conversation censored by the website during a heated discussion about male black birds wrote: 'When is it not in order to refer to a male bird as a **** and a female as a hen? I've heard of PC but that is taking things too far.

It's censorship that is just silly. What should I have said then? The daddy bird, father bird?'

The RSPB protested that they had a lot of children using its website and did not want to risk embarresment.

A spokesman said: 'Pretty much all Internet forums use similar filters. Some words have been hijacked for a different and more offensive meaning. It is far from an ideal situation but it is better to be safe than sorry.'

The word is also hard to spot on the RSPB's main website, where profiles of different species refer to 'males' and 'females', rather than 'cocks' and 'hens'.

The charity said although it had not banned the word it tried to use it sparingly.

The spokesman added: 'Cock has for many years been the word for a male bird and we'd never try to break with tradition for the sake of political correctness.

'We don't use the word very much but we don't use hen very much either.

'The word 'tit' is used an awful lot on the website. We don't have a problem with using that word in the obvious context.

'We have whole pages dedicated to blue tits and great tits because they are some of Britain's best-loved birds.'

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