Happy Thought for 8 March 2024

Have a Happy Thought:

 

Maybe you’re at a pub quiz, or filling in a crossword puzzle. Or maybe you’ve just seen a whole bunch of birds and want to point them out but don’t want to get an ‘80’s song stuck in your head for the next few hours

 

And I ran, I ran so far away …


 Image: ‘80’s band A Flock of Seagulls https://www.mondosonoro.com/blog-musica/a-flock-of-seagulls/

 

(sorry)

 

Anyway, maybe you want to know what to call that group of birds.. is it a flock of seagulls? (are there even seagulls? Or are they just gulls?)

 

And we all know that it’s murder of crows, but what about some of the lesser-known ones?

 

This website has helpfully pulled together a list of the most common ‘collective nouns’ for birds. Feel free to visit for the whole list, here are a few of my faves, and why:

 

A commotion of coots (they are very noisy honkers once they get going)

A curfew of curlews (just fun to say!)

A volery of wagtails (I have no idea what a volery is)

A booby of nuthatches (notice they don’t have a name for a group of boobies here…)

A mischief of magpies (they must have met the Australian magpies…)

An invisibleness of ptarmigans (seriously, how are they calling them invisible, you’ve obviously seen the ptarmigans if you’re pointing out a group of them)

 

And of course, a murmuration of starlings. At least one of you receiving this (you know who you are) sees much better murmurations than this, but here is a short video I took just earlier this week, sunset on the Taranaki coast. Enjoy your moment of zen 😊  

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