A Charm of Goldfinches
& Other Collective Nouns
MATT SEWELL
A Charm of Goldfinches &
Other Collective Nouns
Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Text and illustrations © Matt Sewell 2016
Matt Sewell has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Ebury Press in 2016
www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Project editor: Lydia Good
Edited by: Kate Moore
Design by: Two Associates
ISBN 9781785033889
Printed and bound in China by Toppan Leefung
Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
For my goldfinches, Jess, Romy and Mae
a sleuth of bears
a band of coyotes
a mob of emus
an array of hedgehogs
a memory of elephants
a skulk of foxes
a down of hares
a leap of leopards
a pride of lions
a plague of rats
a gaze of raccoons
a trip of rabbits
a shrewdness of apes
an obstinacy of buffalo
a caravan of camels
a quiver of cobras
a bed of scorpions
a business of ferrets
a crash of hippos
a colony of squirrels
a nest of vipers
a richness of martens
a dazzle of zebras
a lounge of lizards
Contents
a mural of buntings
a convocation of eagles
a charm of goldfinches
a skein of geese
a kettle of hawks
a crown of kingfishers
a deceit of lapwings
an exaltation of larks
a parliament of owls
a descent of woodpeckers
a pod of pelicans
a cloud of bats
a bellowing of bullfinches
a murder of crows
a quarrel of sparrows
an unkindness of ravens
an ostentation of peacocks
a murmuration of starlings
a wake of vultures
a flutter of butterflies
a pitying of turtle doves
a company of parrots
a party of jays
a watch of nightingales
a school of whales
a pod of dolphins
a shiver of sharks
a bask of crocodiles
a smack of jellyfish
a fever of stingrays
a harem of seals
Spotting and Jotting
WE Introduction
DO LOVE to put a label on things, don’t we? Everything from the slightest variation of tone in a colour to the taste of a single flavour in a dish, right through to the tiniest variation in the beats of a song – they all mark a difference and, no matter how small, every variation has a name.
This necessity to name is never more evident than in nature. Most groups of wildlife can be described as a flock, herd or shoal – but where is the fun in ending there? We as humans are romantic poets at heart, who delight in the idiosyncrasies of the natural world, so a simple ‘flock’ is never going to be enough of a description for one group of birds to the next. Thus we examine and embellish and, over time, these observations make their way into common usage as quirky and colourful collective nouns.
A lot of the phrases used in this book are hundreds of years old; maybe even older. The earliest written record of such menageries was from the fourteenth century in The Boke of St Albans by Julyan Berners. It’s a somewhat snooty book about gentlemanly pursuits of the time, mainly hunting and hawking, so a lot of the nouns are explicitly to do with the animals’ characteristics and their cunning, be they predator or prey. Many are humorous and bang on the money, but also quite odd, with antiquated turns of phrase. They are certainly a lot more fun to use than the more modern, perhaps clichéd, descriptive terms.
As well as the delight of the outright weirdness, there is also a lovely bit of oneupmanship that goes hand in hand with knowing your collective nouns. Although… you could always just make your own versions up and nobody would even know.
Is that a deceit of lapwings, anybody?
Land
BA Sleuth of Bears
EARS AREN’T EXACTLY known for their social mobility and friendliness; they are rarely seen in groups outside of their feeding bonanzas and courtship battles. When bears meet outside of these occasions, it always turns nasty. Which is a shame, as they do look so affable, so soft and golden brown… albeit with massive claws and daggerlike teeth and a bum big enough to frighten a police horse.
Brown bears were once found across northern Europe, particularly in Great Britain, but were gone in the UK by the Middle Ages, made extinct through hunting. It is with this sad fact in mind that we find the root of the bear’s odd collective noun: the term ‘a sleuth of bears’ comes from the fourteenth-century Boke of St Albans, a book about hunting. When we think of a sleuth today, it’s a spy with upturned collars and hidden microphones, but the word originally comes from the sleuth hound, which is basically a bloodhound. Such dogs would have been used on the trail of the great brown bears: a bloodthirsty technique of hunting that surely saw off the last of the British bears and, sadly, is still in favour today for other species.
