|
I suspect that the thought police in the US
automatically trash any messages which don't say "Happy Holidays" but
I will start with Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year to
all.
As the pud and mince pies descend you may wish to
contemplate the following collection of collective nouns for US birds courtesy
of the American Littoral Society:
A retreat of yellow-bellied
sapsuckers;
An outbreak of spotted sandpipers (tricky that: we
call them common sandpipers);
A consensus of blackpoll warblers;
A flowering of orchard orioles;
A nausea of worm-eating warblers.
Far be it from me to suggest how the leader of the
next quiz night undertakes his duties but noting his predilection for innovative
use of language there would seem to be a few inquisitional possibilities thrown
up (sorry, can't get past the last item in the list) by this.
Also, I happened upon a book today entitled "The
naming of plants" which purported to be about the history of how plants
got named named. I referred to the index and found no entries for
eucalyptus or Banks. Was I being ethnocentric? I looked up Solander
to keep my Swedish friends happy: nada. I think I'd pass on that
volume(although Linnaeus did get a couple of references).
I have been given a copy of Lives of North American
Birds by Kenn Kaufmann. It seems to be an excellent reference work: not
intended for a field guide but most interesting.
Again, Happy
Holidays
| 