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zinniabooklover said:
No, I know most of these. I just hadn't stopped to consider if it was just an English language thing. And I mean, English English, not American English but also, not realising other languages didn't have their equivalent.

P.S. my top fave is the skylarks. :)
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I updated the list, I forgot half of it!

Here in Sweden, we call all gatherings of birds ‘flock’!
 
What I wonder about is, if you would say for example “wow, look at that big flock of starlings,” would you be corrected?
 
Agonum said:
What I wonder about is, if you would say for example “wow, look at that big flock of starlings,” would you be corrected?
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oh, good god, no! Most of those collective nouns don't get used at all. Some get used in literature or journalism. In everyday conversation, they mostly wouldn't crop up. I have a passing familiarity with some of them bc I read a lot but, for example, I'd forgotten about the skylark one.
 
Agonum said:
What I wonder about is, if you would say for example “wow, look at that big flock of starlings,” would you be corrected?
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P.S. And I genuinely didn't know that 'murmuration' is officially the collective noun for starlings. Although I can understand why bc they do it better than the other birds. They definitely do it better than the crows, lol.
 
zinniabooklover said:
P.S. And I genuinely didn't know that 'murmuration' is officially the collective noun for starlings. Although I can understand why bc they do it better than the other birds. They definitely do it better than the crows, lol.
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Yeah, they ought to be the best. And those murmurations can be so freakingly large! How do they not collide with each other, one wonders.

Africa’s Quelea quelea comes quite close, though.

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These are flocks with up to a billion (en miljard) birds!
 
Agonum said:
Yeah, they ought to be the best. And those murmurations can be so freakingly large! How do they not collide with each other, one wonders.

Africa’s Quelea quelea comes quite close, though.

These are flocks with up to a billion (en miljard) birds!
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Did you check out the video I posted? It's not my fave but it's quite short so does a decent job of showing how cool the starlings are when they get going.
 
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