The collective noun “school of fish” comes from a corruption of the term “shoal of fish,” which seems like a fairly accurate means of quantifying fish in the days before GPS.
This led to an unfortunate anthropomorphic trend of naming aggregations of animals based on some perceived quality – a “pride of lions, a gaggle of geese.” I don’t know if lions are proud. I don’t know whether pride equals one-seventh of the deadliest sins a lion can commit. It seems nonsensical.
A “gaggle of geese” makes more sense. “Gaggle” is a Middle English word meaning, “to cackle” and has an onomatopoeic connection to the noise geese make, particularly in groups.
A “parliament of owls” (no, I’m not making this up) is completely ridiculous. First, owls are not given to aggregation. Second, we have this notion owls are wise. (This is likely due to the fact that the owl was associated with Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. I will make no comment on Greek wisdom for now, things being what they are.) So, if owls congregated, which they don’t, a group of them must constitute some sort of legislature. Should this be a “congress of owls” in the U.S.? (Should “congress” be capitalized in this instance?) Is there a “reichstag of owls” in Germany? A “diet of owls” in Japan? (You can imagine how that might lead to confusion in translation.)
Once, upon hearing me remark that all my friends are doofuses, my friend Susan (doofus) said that when we travel in packs, we should be called a “bungle of doofuses.”
All this came to mind the other evening around dusk as I watched the local crows get themselves sorted for the night. Crows, who may spend long periods alone or in small groups, tend to gather by the hundreds at night in the winter months. They do this as protection against those damned owls, whose legislature seems to be out of session during the dark months.
Actually, mice and other small mammals are harder to come by for owls in the winter, either hiding under the snow or hibernating or enjoying their timeshare at the base of my water heater. So owls go for crows and crows respond by gathering in huge numbers with the likelihood that everyone will not be sleeping at once and the watchers will sound the alarm at the approach of owls. (Although crows are among the smarter birds, this is well within the range of evolutionary adaptation, so don’t go getting all Kansas Board of Education.)
A compact group of individuals, banded together for the purposes of defense might be called a “phalanx of crows,” but it’s not. It’s called – nonsensically – a “murder of crows.” Just as lions are incapable of pride or owls disinclined to enact legislation (Who would sign it? Who would rule on constitutionality?), crows are incapable of murder.
Which is not to say a crow won’t kill if it gets the chance, but crows are more likely to consume dead things killed by other means (frequently cars around here). Even if a crow does her own killing, it’s not murder but sustenance hunting. I imagine even PeTA would be OK with that.
Crows get a bad rap. They’re black. (We know how Americans feel about that.) They’re more likely that other birds to mess with humans or to defend themselves when we try to mess with them. We like individuals or groups to stay in the place we have assigned them. (See above comment about blacks.) They are frequently seen in the vicinity of corpses, but they are not murderers. (Mere circumstantial evidence, your honor.)
Here’s what crows do at dusk: they begin to gather over a certain area that might be as large as two or three square miles. Small groups of them will land in various groups of trees and begin to caw loudly to their still-airborne fellows. Years ago, when we lived higher up the hill and had a sweeping view; we could see this play out every evening. The groups of tree-sitters loudly lobby for their location and the greater mass of crows fly back and forth, seeming to appraise the various options. (I want to be careful with my own anthropomorphizing here.)
Some birds light and a consensus seems to build, only for opinion to change and a plurality seems to settle elsewhere. This collective change of heart may occur up to a dozen times before agreement is reached and the roost is made for the night (often at the back of the parking lot behind the Maltex Building on Pine Street).
All of which is why I think, if we must use collective nouns (based on actual behavior and not projection), a group of crows should rightly be referred to as a quorum.
A Quorum of Crows
The collective noun “school of fish” comes from a corruption of the term “shoal of fish,” which seems like a fairly accurate means of quantifying fish in the days before GPS.
This led to an unfortunate anthropomorphic trend of naming aggregations of animals based on some perceived quality – a “pride of lions, a gaggle of geese.” I don’t know if lions are proud. I don’t know whether pride equals one-seventh of the deadliest sins a lion can commit. It seems nonsensical.
A “gaggle of geese” makes more sense. “Gaggle” is a Middle English word meaning, “to cackle” and has an onomatopoeic connection to the noise geese make, particularly in groups.
A “parliament of owls” (no, I’m not making this up) is completely ridiculous. First, owls are not given to aggregation. Second, we have this notion owls are wise. (This is likely due to the fact that the owl was associated with Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. I will make no comment on Greek wisdom for now, things being what they are.) So, if owls congregated, which they don’t, a group of them must constitute some sort of legislature. Should this be a “congress of owls” in the U.S.? (Should “congress” be capitalized in this instance?) Is there a “reichstag of owls” in Germany? A “diet of owls” in Japan? (You can imagine how that might lead to confusion in translation.)
Once, upon hearing me remark that all my friends are doofuses, my friend Susan (doofus) said that when we travel in packs, we should be called a “bungle of doofuses.”
All this came to mind the other evening around dusk as I watched the local crows get themselves sorted for the night. Crows, who may spend long periods alone or in small groups, tend to gather by the hundreds at night in the winter months. They do this as protection against those damned owls, whose legislature seems to be out of session during the dark months.
Actually, mice and other small mammals are harder to come by for owls in the winter, either hiding under the snow or hibernating or enjoying their timeshare at the base of my water heater. So owls go for crows and crows respond by gathering in huge numbers with the likelihood that everyone will not be sleeping at once and the watchers will sound the alarm at the approach of owls. (Although crows are among the smarter birds, this is well within the range of evolutionary adaptation, so don’t go getting all Kansas Board of Education.)
A compact group of individuals, banded together for the purposes of defense might be called a “phalanx of crows,” but it’s not. It’s called – nonsensically – a “murder of crows.” Just as lions are incapable of pride or owls disinclined to enact legislation (Who would sign it? Who would rule on constitutionality?), crows are incapable of murder.
Which is not to say a crow won’t kill if it gets the chance, but crows are more likely to consume dead things killed by other means (frequently cars around here). Even if a crow does her own killing, it’s not murder but sustenance hunting. I imagine even PeTA would be OK with that.
Crows get a bad rap. They’re black. (We know how Americans feel about that.) They’re more likely that other birds to mess with humans or to defend themselves when we try to mess with them. We like individuals or groups to stay in the place we have assigned them. (See above comment about blacks.) They are frequently seen in the vicinity of corpses, but they are not murderers. (Mere circumstantial evidence, your honor.)
Here’s what crows do at dusk: they begin to gather over a certain area that might be as large as two or three square miles. Small groups of them will land in various groups of trees and begin to caw loudly to their still-airborne fellows. Years ago, when we lived higher up the hill and had a sweeping view; we could see this play out every evening. The groups of tree-sitters loudly lobby for their location and the greater mass of crows fly back and forth, seeming to appraise the various options. (I want to be careful with my own anthropomorphizing here.)
Some birds light and a consensus seems to build, only for opinion to change and a plurality seems to settle elsewhere. This collective change of heart may occur up to a dozen times before agreement is reached and the roost is made for the night (often at the back of the parking lot behind the Maltex Building on Pine Street).
All of which is why I think, if we must use collective nouns (based on actual behavior and not projection), a group of crows should rightly be referred to as a quorum.
© Mark Floegel, 2012