March 29, 2011
What Do You Call a Flock of Birds?
Recently, while perusing the shelves of my bird-crazy colleague Laura, I came across “Winged Wonders: A Celebration of Birds in Human History,” by Peter Watkins and Jonathan Stockland. The book is full of examples of how birds can be found in art and language, but what particularly intrigued me was a list, in the introduction, of the various names for groups of specific birds. A selection:
If you find three or more peacocks, you can call them a "muster" (photo courtesty of flickr user Jamil Soni Neto)
a building of rooks
a desert of lapwings
an exaltation of larks
a head of pheasants
a herd of cranes, curlew or wrens
a kit of pigeons flying together
a murmuration of starlings
a muster of peacocks
a paddling of ducks on the water
a parliament of owls
a piteousness of doves
a richesse of martins
a rookery of penguins
a seige of herons
a tiding of magpies
an unkindness of ravens
a watch of nightingales
a wedge of geese (or of swans in flight)
I love how some of these terms bring up images of, say, owls crowding into a chamber in Westminster or herons taking up arms against a castle. Others elicit thoughts of sound (starlings) or the bad tidings they are supposed to bring (ravens). Which ones are your favorites? Or are there any great ones I missed?
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A ridiculously abundant bird called the yellow-rumped warbler migrates along the East Coast in massive flocks. Sometimes there are so many of them that it’s hard to spot the more exciting rare birds. I call them “an annoyance of yellow-rumps.”
In terms of the broader animal kingdom… this post reminded me of this awesome shirt from etsy: http://www.etsy.com/listing/62457962/animal-group-nouns-mens-baby-blue-in
How fun! I can’t wait to slip one of these into conversation. :)
Murder of crows was always one of my favorites. I vaguely recall reading something long ago that said a lot of these group names were made up by some university students in Britain. College students with too much time on their hands and no Internet? ;-)
My favorite is a murder of crows…now THAT is foreboding!
“An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition” by James Lipton (1993) is a charming little book full of group nouns and some very funny stories.
There is also a wake or committee of Vultures.
Those that gather together near a local grocery store look like a gang rather than a committee.
The book you cited looks very interesting.
A murder of crows has always been my favorite also. Don’t know who came up with it, but it does make me wonder why they did.
[...] ) A group of birds is called a flock, a group of cattle is called a herd, but a group of frogs is called an [...]
what does imbutive mean as to a flock of birds ????