This week’s Nature Photo Challenge from Denzil is to showcase corvids: the crows, ravens, jackdaws, magpies and similar in our lives. I want to showcase as well the collective nouns they’ve all acquired. The ravens in the feature photo seem rather stand off-ish. They are probably extremely miffed at their collective noun: an unkindness of ravens.
I have just one crow for you: I didn’t manage a photo of a murder of crows.
Two jackdaws though. Is that enough to describe them as a clattering of jackdaws?
Then we’re off to Germany to spot a rather odd magpie: is it a magpie? He should be off to join his mates in a conventicle, a tittering, a gulp or a mischief of magpies.
And we’ll end where we started: with a raven, who looks far too dignified to be involved in any unkindness.
By the way. As a child, to help me to distinguish between crows and rooks, I was taught that a crow by itself is in fact a rook. And a crow surrounded by others is – a rook. I hope that’s clear.
Besides Denzil’s challenge, this is also for I. J. Khanewala’s Bird of the Week. Quite a few different birds here, but all are corvids, so I may get away with it … again.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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