whistler

From Middle English whisteler, whistlar, whystelare, from Old English hwistlere (“a player on a flute; a piper”), equivalent to whistle +‎ -er.

• IPA^(key): /ˈʍɪslə(ɹ)/, (wine–whine merger) /ˈwɪslə(ɹ)/

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whistler (plural whistlers)

1. Someone or something that whistles, or who plays a whistle as a musical instrument.
2. Any of several passerine birds of the genera Pachycephala and Coracornis, of Australasia and the western Pacific.
3. Any bird that whistles or is noted for its whistling vocalisations (applied regionally to various specific species).
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     The lether-winged Bat, dayes enimy, / The ruefull Strich, still waiting on the bere, / The Whistler shrill, that who so heares, doth dy […]

4. A goldeneye (any of certain ducks of genus Bucephala).
5. A whistling marmot (Marmota caligata).
6. A mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa).
7. An audio-frequency electromagnetic wave produced by atmospheric disturbances such as lightning.
8. A broken-winded horse.
9. (slang, obsolete) The keeper of a whistling shop, or shebeen.

• (whistling marmot): hoary marmot

• whirtles