Avian LingoCan you name groups of Birds?!!

DGers began discussion on the 'Feb First' thread of the proper names for different flocks of birds...thought it would be fun to continue it here...

a few we came up with were:

a 'murder' of crows
a 'gaggle' of geese
a 'charm' of finches
a 'rook' of ???? who knows?

There are lots more, but what are they?!! Tell us!

No birds in this pic--just our yard on this snowy day...(pls. bear with my while I learn to post and take pictures! At least I'm not shaking as much!) ;-) Have a great day. t.

An exultation of Larks
Pati

actually it's a charm of GOLDfinches :-)

watch of nightingales

unkindness of ravens

-Julie

courtesy of http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/kennel/collectives.htm

Salvia! I think you cheated! Information Overload! ;-) !

Now, are we going to have a Vocabulary test at the end of the month?!

OK, the challenge is: to get a picture of each 'herd', 'murder' or 'wisp' or whatever!

Did you miss any?

t.

I didn't do any work, just got 'em all from that site. Now wouldn't that be fun to get a photo of each thing on the list? Great idea. A March Challenge? I'm game! :-) Of course, it all depends on what I hear when I call the camera repair shop tomorrow. *gulp*

-Julie

Well, at least while your camera's in the shop the rest of us have a chance to get ahead of you!

Even if my camera were in perfect order, I doubt I'd see a pulchritude of peacocks, a nide of pheasants nor a colony of penguins ;-). No competition there LOL. And I haven't a clue what a Dotteral, Dunlin, Guillemot, Ptarmingan or a Snipe even IS! LOL But I'll be very happy to "WOW!" over the photos you all post over the coming weeks :-)

-Julie

You've never been Snipe hunting? What a shame!!

John

LOL John
Pati

I have a book, British Names of Birds by Christine E Jackson, that gives all the multitude of different names for British birds from every area of the country. It has a section of collective nouns at the start. Here are those that are not in the lists above:
A sedge or siege of Bitterns
A tok of Capercaillies
A chattering of Choughs
A flock or skein of Curlews
A flight or trip of Dunlin
A skein of Flamingos
A chevron or string of Geese
A trip of Grey Plover
A flight of Little Auks
A flush, puddling, suit, sute or team of Mallard
A watch of Nightingales
A parcel of Oystercatchers
A brace (2), or pack of Partridges
A bunch, flight, knob or rush of Pochard
An unkindness of Ravens
A congregation of Rooks
A dopping of Shelduck
A gathering of Starlings
A brace of Stock Doves
A bank, eyrar, herd, team of Swans
A bunch or flock of Teal
A trip of Waders
A bunch, flight or little knot of Wigeon
A bunch, gang, pack, party or raft of Wild Ducks
A skein or wedge of Wildfowl

Pati, makes me wonder what kind of friends she had as a kid. ;-)

While looking in the same book, I thought you might like to see one sample of the range of different names some birds have. We were talking about Jackdaws, collective name being:
A train of Jackdaws.
Well here is the list of names (a short list as the book goes) of Jackdaw names:
Jackdaw; caddaw; cadder; caddy;
carder in East Anglia;
cathedral parson in Somerset;
cawdaw in Suffolk;
chank in Devon;
chatterjack in Somerset;
chough in Cornwall;
corrachan; cottiag;
daa in Sussex;
daw in Sussex;
Jack (immature);
Jackdaa Hertfordshire;
jacker in Somerset;
Jacky; John Daw;
ka wattie in Scotland;
kae in Scotland;
kay in Scotland;
I looked out the only picture I have taken of a Jackdaw Corvus monedula, which was taken in Wales in 1998:

I had a boyfriend once who took me snipe hunting.

Uh-oh.

Now John, just because I live half a world away doen't mean you can get away with picking on me. I know where you live buddy! ROTFL Nope, never went any kind of hunting. I'm not good with guns....make my palms sweat, my heart palpitate and my tummy hurt just thinking about holding one.

Ken, thanks for the further lists :-). Now how did anyone remember all those different names way back when people knew about such things? Or did "they" ever really know? LOL To me birds are all flocks, pairs or singles :-)

-Julie

OK, now WHO decides what is going to be a 'train' and what is a flock, bazaar, parcel, a watch of nightengales, etc. Is it someone at the Oxford English Dictionary Office, or Shakespeare, or Her Majesty's Royal Birdster, just where do they get this stuff?!

Can someone write/email Christine Jackson of Kennedy's book and ask her the source?
Salvia's list lists some sources but I am not familiar with any of the names--

Thank you....

No guns allowed when snipe hunting, Jule.

Ah, I see.....you're teasing me with slang I'm not familiar with. Now that's even meaner! Naughty naughty John! Behave OK! ;-)

-Julie

Maybe somebody should take Salv snipe hunting.

If Julie comes to the 2006 Texoma Roundup, I will organize a hunt in her honor.

John

Let's see, I've seen lots of bitterns, curlews, dunlins, flamingos, geese, plover, but not grey, mallards, oystercatchers-both, pochards, ravens, rooks, shelducks, starlings, doves, but not stock, swans, teals-blue, green, and cinnamon, widgeons, 2 kinds, wild ducks, and wild fowl AND a snipe. Do I get a good mark or am I just a showoff? I have pics of some but mostly I videotaped them (better zoom and they move!). Hafta go find them all again. Oh boy! BTW I saw the snipe with my DBF, so I guess you could say we honestly were snipe hunting.

boojum--on this thread we don't say 'LOTS OF' when referring to birds. Now we use the correct terminology! No excuses! (Thanks to Salvia and Kennedy!) :-) t.

LOL, but see, at the RU you'll have to come up with something you haven't turned my attention to beforehand. Now I've done my snipe research and I know how to hunt them. Too bad for my family and friends in highschool .... I'd have been an easy target for snipe hunting. LOL I'm wise to your tricks now though John. ;-)

-Julie

Well if we are going to try and illustrate all these birds, here is a Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber that I photographed in the Galapagos, though I think there has to be more than one to qualify as a STAND or FLAMBOYANCE! Although even one is pretty flamboyant!!!

tabasco, Here is the passage from Christine Jackson's book which defines her Sources:

Julie, ha, ha, ha, ha! That was ALMOST as good as the real thang.

t, lotsa little brown birds would be ok, wouldn't it?

Thanks k., for the confirmation. But are any of those fellas named the Royal Birdster? Seriously, they do sound legit, although no lord or even an Esq. among them....

It's good to know Christine Jackson did her research properly and we can rely on the terminology when we write the definitive birdster book.

I think we call them 'sparrows various'.

Thats the scintific name.

Why am I remembering the phrase "a congress of crows"? Does anybody have any idea where that came from? My brain is like a badly organized attic! - Juolie

I did a quick search for "congress of crows" on google and found another site full of collective names for groups of birds: http://birding.about.com/library/weekly/aa032700a.htm
This one includes your Congress of Crows.
It also gives us our first collectives for Hummingbirds:
A charm of hummingbirds, a troubling of hummingbirds, a hover of hummingbirds

Reading further in that last list, here are some that I particularly liked:
A tiding of Magpies
A squadron of Pelicans
A pitying of Turtledoves
A descent of Woodpeckers
A concentration of Kingfishers
A deceit of Lapwings
A raft of Loons

Thanks, Ken. I saw a large group of crows - maybe 40 - on Sunday, and they did remind me of our senators hanging out in the Senate cloakroom, waiting for a major vote. These may have been discussing our pending snow.

I especially like your "squadron of pelicans" and "raft of loons." That's how they've always looked to me.

Julie

Kennedy, you've provided the name for a bird I was going to add a link to. Thaumaturgist just posted a pic of a SQUADRON of Pelicans :-) http://davesgarden.com/forums/fp.php?pid=1315793

One down....5 million to go ;-)

-Julie

Now we know what the band really should have been called ;-) "COLONY of Seagulls"

Julie, you said

The Guillemot Uria aalge is an auk, a cousin of the puffin. They are very marine birds, and nest on coastal cliffs in the UK. I mainly saw them when at sea in the days when I worked in Marine Fisheries reasearch. This is the variety known as the Bridled Guillemot because of the white streak behind its eye and I photographed this from a research trawler back in April 1971

The Snipe Gallinago gallinago is another wading bird frequenting marshes. They have been a popular game bird for many years. They are fascinating birds and in the breeding season, they perform a spectacular display flight, called drumming. They climb to a fair height and then dive steeply with their tail fully spread and special stiff outer tail feathers vibrate with a loud drumming sound. I witnessed this once in Cambridgeshire in England. When I lived in Suffolk, just before moving to Australia, I trained as a bird-bander and we were mist-netting in the marshes around Oulton Broad. We were mainly trying to catch reed warblers and bearded tits, but the end of the net stuck out beyond the patch of reeds and this snipe flew round the reeds and into the end of the net. We have a species of snipe in Australia in the summer, but they don't breed here. They have become quite rare and I have not seen one since I left Tasmania in 1985.

Ken, thank you for those pics! The snipe is my favorite with that sword-like beak! Very pretty bird :-)

-Julie