collective nouns

["John Leonard" <>]

There have been various threads on Birding-aus over the years about collective nouns for groups of different types of birds, eg a 'murder' of crows.

Birding-aus subscribers should realise that the invention of collective nouns appropriate to different kinds of birds is simply a literary parlour game of Victorian vintage, and does not reflect actual usage either now, or at some time in the past.

The only collective nouns to use for groups of birds are:

English: a flock of X
American English: a bunch of X (or in the case of a large flock 'a whole bunch of X')

John L

-- 
John Leonard
Canberra
Australia
www.jleonard.net