Photo by Josh Henderson
Cedar waxwings often form museums while searching for food high in trees or bushes.
Many animals like to stay in groups. After all, safety in numbers is a wonderful survival tactic for wild creatures. Prey animals are safer from predators and the predators can work together with their group mates to take down prey.
But one thing about these groups has always fascinated me: their names. “Collective noun” is the term for what we call a group of something. For example, a group of coyotes is a pack. Deer form a herd, and seagulls come together as a flock.
Why do we have different names for these groups and where did they all come from? It turns out, there are some wacky collective nouns out there. Within the birds alone, there are some good ones. Some of my favorites are a murder of crows, a committee of vultures, a conspiracy of ravens (what are they conspiring about?), and a parliament of owls. Songbirds are not left out either, with a charm of goldfinches or a museum of waxwings.
Mammals, too, have some good collective nouns in their ranks. When bats come together, they form a cauldron.
Squirrels form a scurry, and a group of bears is, strangely enough, called a sloth, while sloths themselves do not seem to have a widely agreed-upon collective noun, although “bed” and “snuggle” are in the running.
So where did all these strange nouns come from? Wouldn’t it be simpler to just call everything a group, or limit it to the more basic terms like pack, herd, and flock?
After all, it is nearly impossible to remember the collective noun for all the different types of animals, especially when some of them seem intended to be silly or not all that related to the animal itself.
Well, it turns out these words have a long history. In 1486 Dame Juliana Berners, a noble-born lady turned nun, published her thoughts on hunting in The Book of Saint Albans. The book was about the hobbies of gentlemen of the time: hunting, hawking (now more commonly called falconry), and heraldry.
After the Berner’s hunting chapter there is an appendix with 165 collective nouns for animals commonly encountered while hunting, and humorous collective nouns for people, such as a blast of hunters and a melody of harpists. Interestingly, this is also one of the earliest known works written by a woman in the English language.
This book sparked a tradition of unique collective nouns that has persisted into the modern age. Clearly, some of the collective nouns originally published in 1486 were created as jokes, and not commonly used in everyday speech.
However, as the book gained popularity, readers enjoyed these strange phrases so much that they began using and expanding on the list, inventing names for groups of all sorts of animals. Many of the collective nouns we still have around today come from the original book or shortly thereafter.
Languages change and evolve over time, so to have these strange phrases survive for so long is somewhat surprising, especially as they have very little practical use. There is an easy explanation though: they are fun.
To me, this seems to be proof that no matter when a person was born, or how long ago they lived, everyone enjoys a bit of silliness in their lives. And when those silly words ultimately lead to an interest in nature, like these collective nouns tend to do, that just makes it even better. Audubon Community Nature Center builds and nurtures connections between people and nature.
ACNC is located just east of Route 62 between Warren and Jamestown. The trails and outdoor facilities are open from dawn to dusk. The Nature Center is open from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. daily except Sunday when it opens at 1 p.m. More information can be found online at auduboncnc.org or by calling (716) 569-2345.