A Murder, a Party, a Stare, or a Siege
BirdNote Daily
BirdNote
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2021
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a bird note. |
| 0:03.0 | One crow is just a crow. |
| 0:08.0 | Two make a pair. |
| 0:09.0 | Three might be a crowd, but a group of crows is called a murder. |
| 0:15.0 | A fitting name for this bunch of rascals. |
| 0:21.0 | How did such a name come about? According to James Lipton, author of an |
| 0:26.3 | exultation of larks. These names, called collective nouns, have been around for hundreds of years. |
| 0:35.0 | Others believe that the Victorians invented many of these names as a fanciful parlor game. |
| 0:41.0 | Collective nouns are a mixture of poetry, |
| 0:44.0 | alliteration, and description. These labels are not used by |
| 0:48.1 | ornithologists, but they add a bit of fun to the study of birds, |
| 0:52.0 | don't you think? If you've ever watched a parade of swans on a lake, |
| 0:56.7 | you can see why it's called a wedge of swans. Bold rockous jays make up a party of jays. |
| 1:04.0 | Many names bring an image of the birds instantly to mind. |
| 1:08.0 | A stare of owls, a company of parrots, a spring of teal. |
| 1:15.0 | Now here's one that might be misnamed. |
| 1:20.0 | Do you think all this noise should be called a murmuration of starlings? |
| 1:28.3 | So what would a group of bird note listeners be? |
| 1:31.5 | Hmm. For bird note. For Bird Note, Note, I'm Michael Stein. |
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