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G'Day,
Quite
a few years ago on a quiz on the ABC radio program "My Word", the correct
collective noun for ravens was claimed to be "a suicide of ravens".
Apparently, the association of murder and suicide with crows and ravens
is on account of the black plumage (and owes something to the works of Edgar
Allen Poe).
In the
same vein, it's just as well "funereal cockatoo" didn't catch-on too much for
our Yellow-tailed black cockatoo - on account of the long black tails
evoking a "mourning suit".
It may
be a coincidence, but the aptness of "suicide of ravens" was brought out in an
earlier birding-Aus email which I've extracted from the 1998 archives and
appended under my signoff
Regards
Bruce
Roubin
- To:
- Subject: ravens on electricity towers
- From: Peregrine <>
- Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 01:54:42 -0400 (EDT)
- Cc:
Please help us volunteers at the Birds Australia office in Sydney with
this tricky question....
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to dissuade Australian Ravens
from nesting on electricity towers? The ravens are apparently causing
problems for the people at the BHP steel works in Port Kembla by
shorting out the wires and committing suicide on the lines. The BHP
people have heard of people elsewhere building platforms to encourage
birds to nest in less inconvenient locations and want to know if there
are any sucessful designs of platforms which have been used in Australia
or overseas. I know in the US platforms are built above the lines for
ospreys but I don't know if that would work for ravens.
If anyone in the vast pool of experience which is the internet has any
suggestions on possible solutions or where to research this sort of
thing, please reply directly to me.
many thanks, and good birding,
Katie Bertsche
Jim Reside wrote:
Hello Folks, Just a request for some bird trivia information. A
young friend has been asked to find out what the collective _expression_ is for
a group of Ravens and a group of Gulls. I have only heard of people referring
to a "murder" of Crows, I think, and assumed that it referred to both Crows
and Ravens. I have never encountered something for Gulls other than a flock. I
hope somebody can enlighten me and my young friend. Thanks, Jim Reside
Jim,
A quick search of 'Google' under 'collective nouns' turned up a site - http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/
- which also (yes it had a "murder of crows") offered a "colony of gulls" and an
"unkindness of ravens" - the latter sounds a bit odd.
Judy Philip
Adelaide, South Australia
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