Birds by the Numbers

My wife’s elderly aunt clips newspaper articles about birds and sends them to me. One arrived recently with a little note attached: “This fell out of my dictionary.” So I don’t know when or where it is from. But it opened an interesting subject - how do we refer to numbers of birds?

The newspaper clipping began with: “many of us know that it’s truly bad form when among birders to blurt out, ‘Oh, look at that big bunch of crows!’ ‘It’s a murder of crows!’ a prism of bonafide birders will promptly advise you with blood in their eyes. And so, with an unkindness of ravens or a parliament of owls or a pitying of turtle-doves. There’s a way to speak of groups of things and you’d better get them right.”

I read this and I thought - Well, okay, maybe I’m not the bonafide birder I thought I was, because I am most likely to refer to a bunch, slew, or scads of birds.

However, there are a few other phrases for numbers of birds with which I am familiar: a kettle of hawks, a gaggle of geese, a raft of ducks.

Where the phrases with which I was familiar came from was not difficult to figure out. “A kettle of hawks” describes hawks rising on warm thermals, much as bubbles might rise to the surface in a boiling kettle of water. “Gaggle” is what a bunch of geese sound like. A large number of ducks riding the ocean waves look like a rudderless raft rising and falling. A “raft” can also refer to a large collection of something, such as a large collection of ducks.

But where does the term “a murder of crows” come from? Apparently the term derives from the persistent folk tale that crows form tribunals to judge and punish the bad behavior of a member of the flock. If the verdict goes against the defendant, that bird is killed (murdered) by the flock. The basis in fact may be that occasionally crows will kill a dying crow who doesn’t belong in their territory - or much more commonly, that they will feed on carcasses of dead crows. Also, both crows and ravens are associated with battlefields, medieval hospitals, execution sites and cemeteries, all places where crows scavenged on human remains. These associations with places of death may account for “the unkindness of ravens.” The latter phrase may also relate to the image of the raven used by Danish vikings on their flags - “unkindness” being a characteristic of these marauding bands.

Parliament is a gathering for talk and discussion. I remember one summer evening on Sunset Lake listening to a “parliament” of Barred Owls conversing back and forth. And the voice of the dove is often mournful (Mourning Dove) and plaintive - hence “a pitying of turtle-doves.”

My curiosity peaked, I did some further research. There are a few terms that can be applied to many different groups of birds: colony, company, flock, parliament, party. There are other group terms that are standard and likely recognizable to many people, even non-birders: a bevy of quail, a bouquet of pheasants, a covey of partridges (or grouse or quail), a skein of geese.

Here are terms which use to be used, but are hardly ever heard anymore: a congregation of plovers, a dole of doves, a paddling of ducks. My source suggested that “a host of sparrows” falls into this category, but I find myself using “host” for sparrows and many other species. That same source also cites “a fall of woodcock” as an obsolete term. This Spring I began a revival of “a fall of woodcock,” for that is an apt description of how the woodcock’s display flight concludes - after circling and twittering overhead, he suddenly drops, or falls, out of the night sky as he returns to his dance floor.

Many of these terms are listed in James Lipton's An Exaltation of Larks (1991), which is based on old sources. The terms evolved during the Middle Ages when the sophisticated art of hunting demanded an equally sophisticated vocabulary. In addition to a passion for sport, the nobles also delighted in the play of words. There were manuscript lists of group names in the 15th century, and these lists appeared in some of the first books printed in England.

The best source for investigating the histories of English words is the Oxford English Dictionary. Unfortunately, even the venerable OED is not always reliable. The word "kettle" (as both a noun and a verb) has been used by hawk watchers for many years, and it has often appeared in print; the OED editors obviously are not birders, since they do not make any reference to “a kettle of hawks.”

In my search for terms to express bird numbers, I came across many which appear to be modern coinages. The nature of some of these coinages leads me to conclude that some birders have been spending too much time peering through their binoculars. Consider: a herd of cowbirds, a stew of oystercatchers, a pint of bitterns, an avalanche of Snow Geese, a jar of nuthatches, a suite of nutcrackers, an earful of waxwings, a grain of sanderlings, a gallup of redpolls, a college of cardinals, a yard of juncos (we’ve got some of those around the county), and perhaps the dumbest of all, a dan of quail. Those are just a few. Here’s my contribution: a bumbling of bushtit.

So, what do we make of all of this? Not much. If you want to refer to those geese you saw as a bunch, rather than a gaggle, that’s okay. If you like pointing toward those hawks that are “flying in a big circle” rather than kettling, who am I to complain? But as far as I’m concerned those hundred big black birds rising out of their rousting pines are going to be “a murder of crows,” because at the very least, they can make a murderous noise when they want.

Now that Spring is fully sprung, I can finally get outside of my four walls and enjoy the harold of robins, a gross of grosbeaks, the treasury of goldfinches, and the tyranny of kingbirds! But frankly, I can do without the corral of cowbirds.

Good birding!