Friday morning I looked outside and saw lots of cormorants floating in the channel. What is that clump of cormorants doing out there? I thought to myself as I got the camera to take a photo. (Yes, you have to look closely to see them; that's just what the scene looked like then. I think there are about 15.) Then I thought, why did I instinctively use the word "clump" to describe that gathering? That led me to hunt through my shelves for An Exaltation of Larks, the delightful book that has names for groupings of birds and animals, to see if there was a noun like "exaltation" for cormorants. I couldn't find my book anywhere.
I searched the web, where I came across Alexander Boldizar's "Bucket of Venary." http://www.boldizar.com/blog/2009/01/bucket-of-venary/ Venary are words that originally came out of "Olde England" language to indicate collections of birds and animals. Boldizar has been collecting these charming and poetic words. Here are my favorites of the venary terms he's found that describe groupings of birds I've seen from the houseboat:
A nadger of ducks (flying)
A dopping of ducks (diving)
A raft of ducks
A convocation of eagles
A turandot of finches
A nide of geese
A siege of herons
A charm of hummingbirds
A lute of mallards
A richness of martens
A parliament of owls (hoots only)
A ubiquity of sparrows
An eyrar of swans
A pump of wildfowl
Alas, nothing for cormorants. I decided rather than a clump I shall declare them a coterie of cormorants, since they seem to be socializing, and maybe someday that will become their official term of venary.
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