Trevor’s Birding

A Collection of Collective Nouns for Birds

The contributors of Birding-Aus, an Australian forum about birding, have sometimes debated the relative collective nouns for birds. I recently discovered a list that seems fairly comprehensive and its on Wikipedia.

We all know about:

  • a flock of geese
  • a murder of crows
  • a brood of hens
  • a clutch of chicks
  • a parliament of owls

I was rather surprised to read about:

  • a wake of vultures (I just hope it’s not MY wake!)
  • a pandemonium of parrots (the author of this one must have been thinking about either Galahs or Lorikeets)
  • a quarrel of sparrows (isn’t that apt!)
  • an exultation of skylarks (how poetic)

Finally, I will not accept this one, and even Wikipedia lists this as spurious.

  • A gulp of Swallows!

Links:

 

2 Responses to “A Collection of Collective Nouns for Birds”

  1. Snail Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

    Thanks for putting up those links. Do you know how frequently those collective noun discussions come up at work? Surprisingly often.

    My favourite is an unkindness of ravens. It’s such a bizarre noun (among a collection of the plain peculiar).

  2. Trevor Says:
    October 30th, 2006 at 9:57 pm

    I guess ravens can be rather unkind, mainly to the eggs or offspring of other species. Perhaps that is the origin of the saying. It would be intriguing to find out where some of these terms originated; in many cases I guess we will never know.

    Update: after a little Googling I came up with this:

    “unkindness of ravens refers to an old legend that ravens push their young out of the nest to survive as best they can.”

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