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Have I confused you yet? We all know the collective noun for a group of birds of any type is called a flock.

Many of you might have heard of a murder of crows, or a gaggle of geese…but what else is out there? What other old terms, perhaps used for centuries and now mostly forgotten, lurk in dusty dictionaries and little viewed academic webpages?

I saw the most amazing video posted on facebook this afternoon of a murmuring of starlings. I’d never heard that term before, and it got my brain zipping about with story ideas. Of course I wondered what ELSE might be out here. So to increase your knowledge, and sometimes make you giggle, here are some other collective nouns for birds.

• Chickens- a peep of chickens
• Cranes- a herd of cranes
• Crows- a murder of crows
• Doves- a flight of doves or a dole/dule of doves
• Ducks- a badling of ducks or a raft of ducks
• Goldfinches- a charm of goldfinches
• Geese- a gaggle of geese or a skein of geese
• Guinea Fowl- a rasp of guinea fowl
• Hawks- a cast of hawks or a lease of hawks
• Lapwings- a deceit of lapwings or a desert of lapwings
• Larks- an exultation of larks
• Nightingales- a watch of nightingales
• Owls- a parliament of owls
• Parrots- a pandemonium of parrots
• Ravens-an unkindness of ravens
• Starlings- a murmuring of starlings
• Swans- a game of swans or a wedge of swans
• Teal- a spring of teal

Neat isn’t it? There are more of course… and I’ll not even get started on animals… at least not today!

However… what about our supernatural beings? There is a kiss of vampires… but what else? What are your favorite collective nouns?

The Jungle Grapevine by Alex Beard, Abrams Books, 2009
Alex Beard draws from his travels in Africa to recount a story that is inspired by the game of "telephone."
When the animals overhear a comment or' conversation, they do not quite get it right when they repeat it. A crisis builds with each mis-telling until the whole animal kingdom is in an uproar. "I heard it through the grapevine" is the theme of this story.

Beard has a naive painting style that flows and is not contained by the frame of the double page spreads. The animals eavesdrop and spread the gossip from the margins of the page.

The dangers of gossip and not listening are gently depicted.




A Paddling of Ducks: animals in groups from A to Z by Marjorie Blain Parker, illustrated by Joseph Kelly, Kids Can Press, 2010.

This ABC book is a riotous celebration of animal collective nouns. Certainly, the best known book of collective nouns is James Lipton's comprehensive An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition. Marjorie Blain Parker has limited herself and selected one noun for each of the twenty-six letters in the alphabet.

In super-lit and vivid color, Joseph Kelly' pseudo realistic style echoes the groups' names with unexpected humor. A band of monkeys plays on wind instruments in band uniforms but the "bloat of hippos" labors away on exercise bikes.

Parker has selected animals that are familiar and others that are exotic. Fish in the "run of salmon" all sport a number as they would in a marathon race. The "labor of moles" wear hard hats and operate earth-moving equipment while being overseen by a "watch of nightingales." The pages offer more details which are fun to discover. An otter shares the "O" page with the"bed of oysters" and an anteater appears on the "A" page with the "army of ants." It is hard to choose just one but, I think my favorite page is the "skulk of foxes" -- no, the "crash of rhinos."

This is a very entertaining and visually stunning book. It clearly conveys the concept and meaning of collective nouns. This is a must-have for a school or public library.

Still in Brazil. Still with Miss Maddy. Still having a lovely time.

Bought lots of books in the Paraty Festival bookshop today -- and saw many beautiful Brazilian editions of my stuff I hadn't seen before.

My favourite article read on the plane, incidentally, was the wonderful The Magic Olympics -- with tricks explained! by Alex Stone, in Harpers, which you can read online at: http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/0082095 (my second favourite was the Gopnik article on Chesterton in the New Yorker, but it's not online, and I think he missed the boat about Chesterton politically).

Hi Neil,You wrote a lovely story, told by Abel (I believe) about crows sitting in judgment on their storytellers. Somewhere along the way, this story became fact in my head. I was wondering if there is any truth to the myth, or if it's just myth. Maybe you could pass the question on to the Birdchick?Thanks!MRM

The description of corvids sitting around one of their number, cawing back and forth, and then sometimes killing it and sometimes flying off is something I've run into in old bird literature (and more recently as well -- since Sandman 40 came out I've read an eyewitness account of it in the Smithsonian Magazine). As to why it happens, I don't think you'll find any bird people who claim to know.

I should mention that the collective noun for rooks is not a parliament (which is actually the collective noun for owls) or it wasn't until I wrote Sandman 40, anyway. Mostly it's a building or a clamour of rooks. Sometimes it's a storytelling of rooks, which sounds like something I might have made up anyway...

Does Neil have an official myspace page? If so what is the adress?

No, I don't. There's an unofficial one, or more than one out there. I keep meaning to set up official myspaces and facebooks, but really tend to feel that keeping this place under control is more than enough for one author, and it never happens.

Hi Neil--Not really a question for you, just comment. You mentioned Tom Stoppard in your blog today. They say you should never meet your heroes, but they never say how cool it is when some of your heroes meet each other and get along so well. You seem to get along well with just about everyone. What just makes me smile is that so many of them are heroes of mine (Dave McKean, Roger Zelazny, Tom Stoppard, Philip Pullman,... ).Good luck growing up to be Mr. Stoppard. You seem well on your way.Have fun!
Geoff

Actually, you should never meet your heroes if you want to keep them as heroes. They may wind up as friends or as disappointments or as pleasant surprises, but once you know them they immediately stop being heroes. (I've turned down several opportunities to meet Stephen Sondheim socially, because he's practically all I've got left. Even David Bowie, who I've never even met, has managed to transmute in my head most of the way from DAVID BOWIE ZOMG!!1!* to my friend Duncan's dad.)

But then, I'm not sure about heroes at the best of times. I wrote about it at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/10/whatever-happened-to-sancho-panza.asp
and still feel pretty much the same way now.

The most remarkable thing about Tom Stoppard (leaving aside the whole him-being-a-genius thing) is he's twenty years older than me, and he has my hair!

This gives me hope.



.......

*correct !!1! punctuation assistance here by Maddy.

I have always loved collective nouns—those interesting labels that describe groups of things, like “a pride of lions.” I think it’s fascinating to see the connection between the label and the attributes or behaviors of the item, object, or animal. Apparently, I’m not alone. Poet and professor Marjorie Maddox shares my fascination and has created 14 new poems centered around this notion in her 2008 book, A Crossing of Zebras; Animal Packs in Poetry. The table of contents says it all:

A Rumba of Rattlesnakes
A Tower of Giraffes
A Pounce of Alley Cats
An Army of Ants
A Murder of Crows
A Cartload of Monkeys
A Leap of Leopards
A School of Fish
A Crossing of Zebras
A Band of Coyotes
A Scurry of Squirrels
A Pride of Lions
A Crash of Rhinos
A Charm of Butterflies

Maddox uses a variety of poetic forms to capture the characteristics of the animal or the humor in the label, with rhymes, rhythms, and strong sound qualities that are pleasing to the ear. Here’s one example:

A School of Fish
by Marjorie Maddox

A school of fish reads in my swimming pool,
reciting ABCs and golden rules
(look both ways, be nice, no ocean duels).
They know it all—mountains to molecules:
T. rex, magic, Minotaurs, toadstools,
volcanoes, vipers, tricks for April Fool’s,
Egyptian mummies, pirates and their jewels,
strange flying saucers, robots, ghosts and ghouls.
Their dictionaries float, Old Mother Goose
quacks her rhymes and rhythms; it’s so cool
I’m signing a petition at my school—
let’s hold class every summer at the pool.

From: Maddox, Marjorie. 2008. A Crossing of Zebras; Animal Packs in Poetry. Illus. by Philip Huber. Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, p. 19.

Philip Huber’s scratchboard illustrations add a strange and electric quality to the poems and a “Note from the Author” provides insight into the fascinating, less-than-scientific process used for coining collective nouns. Related books (like Ruth Heller’s A Cache of Jewels) and Web sites are suggested, as an extra bonus. Check it out!

Picture credit: Amazon

First: I am featured today on PensEyeView.com, check it out!

So, I figured it was high time for an addition to the collective nouns series. This one has been in my mind for a long time, and the word is so perfect, isn’t it? I mean, who doesn’t want to clutch baby chicks?

(a warning: if you’re squeamish, best stop reading right here, just skip to the next entry…)

Of course, I feel a little different about yellow fuzzy chicks after spending time at the endangered species conservation centre my dad worked at—they got boxes full of chicks from local egg-producing farms, as they would regularly hatch eggs to replenish their chicken brood, but the males were useless to them. So, they sent the day-old chicks to the farm, which is great, as this particular conservation centre has many large cats, who heartily endorse the idea of baby chicks for breakfast. One year on the Easter long weekend my sister and I got to go spend some time with one of the handlers there—she drove us through the cat enclosures, and it was so surreal, stopping next to a cheetah, and throwing a huge side of some sort of animal carcass over the fence, along with a handful of yellow chicks from a bucket. It sounds cruel but really, it’s far more natural than any alternative. Still, an odd sight at Easter, I must say.

As an interesting side note, a newly born chick still has yolk inside it. Seems strange, no?

Here's an interesting and funny story from Arin Greenwood. That woman can write! And it's also instructive if you're thinking of leaving Saipan.

Arin's Scam Story.