If, say, we were gardening in the street and I was to yell, “Huh, look, a murmuration of swallows”, would you know I was using the collective noun for a gathering of swallows, not the sounds they may be making then?

And if it were a particularly abundant day in the skies of Chippendale, and, looking up, we espied lots of magpies, and you said, “Crikey, a tiding of magpies”, would I know what you referred to?

It’s not essential to know these things to garden here, or anywhere.  But it may get your mates thinking if you could drop the odd collective noun about birds in this way.

If you wish to add this facility to your gardening repertoire there’s a handy primer here:

- www.palomaraudubon.org…

There’s not a lot of pheasants about the leafy, quiet, gently rolling hills of Chippendale, which is a pity, because, for my part, what I’d like to see is a bouquet of pheasants. and I would do if they were to be flushed from the grounds here.

An interesting thing to consider when thinking about the naming of birds when they take flight is the way humans walk, and compare the two.

A flightless thing, your human tends to walk, I think, like its dog (if they have one).  (I don’t think dogs copy the way their human keepers walk, but I could be wrong.)

Thus, some humans roll along, others carry their weight, others flounce, some gambol their way to the park.  You’ll see your restrained poodle and, sure enough, its owner may have a restrained but nonetheless a walk reminiscent of that type of poodle walk.  The lesser sized but highly strung poodle will often be competing with a gad about and perhaps highly coiffed human.  And your scampering King Charles will often bring with it a cavalierly walking wench or cock a hoop fellow, but, unfortunately, not always (some humans don’t breed true to type in this area).

What I’d like to begin in my own mind now is the list of collective nouns for the way birds fly.  That ‘bouquet’ of pheasants has got me thinking this way.

When flying a flock of pigeons, I think, will hum; hence, a hum of a flock of pigeons would describe them in flight.

My spirit bird, my passion in the world, is the Aussie parrot in all its kinds.  My heart sings especially when I  see the vividly green and almost unbelievable red grass parrot outside my window.  The parrot is in numbers a ‘company’ and I’m sorry they’re so called; if I had a moment I’d campaign to change that collective noun.  In my heart I call them a ‘passion of parrots’.

But, despite being poorly termed by a collective noun by humans, they will fly more or less like our heart beats, or would like to; they fly, I think, like a surging, rhythm of waves when there’s been no storm  - a quick beat of wings and up, then gracefully down as they appear to revell in that moment of flight even as gravity brings them down again  ’til they quickly beat their wings again.

May the flights of birds be with you no matter your walk or dog,

Michael