I suspect we all use set of words to imply numbers but I reckon Mark has maybe excelled in getting most of them out there. The selection used was:
at least 39, very large numbers of, quite a few, smaller numbers of, heaps of, common, one, a few, only yielded a few, a small flock of, Several hundred, there were 29, hundreds of and large numbers of.......
I am not suggesting that we need to know or that anyone should necessarily count everything and provide the numbers but this just struck me as worth thinking about how we understand this information. Mainly because this is such a good example.
If we were to rank these expressions from smallest number to largest number I wonder how many variations we would come up with. In particular I have often been curious about which is the larger number, out of “a few” and “quite a few”? I suspect that the word
“quite” increases the number but I don’t know how ......
Philip
From: Mark Clayton [
Sent: Saturday, 3 June, 2017 1:04 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] bungendore area this morning
Afternoon all,
My wife and I did a quick trip out to the Bungendore area this morning to see what was around bird-wise. At the large “pond” on Lake Road there were at least 39 Freckled Ducks, very large numbers of Pink-eared Ducks and Grey Teal, quite
a few Australasian Shovelers, and smaller numbers of Hardheads, Pacific Black Ducks, Chestnut Teal, Australian Shelducks and Australian Wood Ducks. Obviously there has been some sort of plant or animal “bloom” in the water as both the Pink-ears and shovelers
very noisily filtering the water’s surface. There were heaps of Eurasian Coots feeding on the grass on the far side of the pond, and both Black-fronted (common) and one Red-kneed Dotterel were feeding around the edges. One Grey Butcherbird and a few Galahs
were about all the “land birds” that seemed to be around. Obviously the Australian Painted Snipe are long gone.
A very brief stop at the Bungendore Sewage Works only yielded a few shoveler, Grey and Chestnut Teal and a small flock of “woodies” feeding on a grassy bank. Several hundred Galahs were feeding on the ground over the road from the BSW.
At the dam on Trucking Yard Lane there were 29 Plumed Whistling Ducks and hundreds of Pacific Black Ducks and Grey Teal. Towards the silos about 200 metres away were large numbers of Common Mynas judging by their calls. We then headed up
to the pond by the railway line (sorry, I forget its name) where we pulled over to let a farm vehicle pass us when we noticed that it was dragging something by the left front wheel. This turned out to be a dog and we managed to stop the farmer and informed
him of his nearly disastrous situation. Luckily for all concerned the dog was not injured and the farmer was both upset and a bit hot under the collar as 3 or 4 of his farm dogs had escaped his yard and he was trying to catch them. I hate to think what would
have happened to the dog if we hadn’t happened along. Needless to say we disturbed all the ducks on the dam but did notice that there were no whistle ducks there.
Mark
