Category: stoke

A murder of crows: Collective nouns for birds

I love nomenclature like this. A “drift” of quail. A “siege” of herons. A “charm” of goldfinches. A “murder” of crows.

It all points to a time when people had a different connection with place, a complex knowledge of and taxonomy for describing flora and fauna.

For a great dictionary of these kinds of terms, not for birds but for general terrain, check Home Ground edited by Barry Lopez.

The following is taken from Wikipedia:

The standard collective noun for a group of birds of any type is a flock.[1]

For a number of individual birds, there exist collective nouns particular to the type of bird. Many of these collective nouns are fanciful and not in common use in English. The book A Mess of Iguanas… A Whoop of Gorillas by Alon Shulman is a good reference for the collective nouns and their etymology. James Lipton’s book An Exaltation of Larks is devoted to these collective nouns, many of which originated as hunters’ terms and have been in the language for centuries.

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View from the Plataforma

Our first day back after 25 hour bus ride (snow delay) from Buenos Aires. This is the view from the ‘plataforma’, which is reached after a short chairlift (new this year, last year you had to hike), then 5 minute T-bar ride, then a 20 minute hike. The peaks of cerro Perito Moreno are in the background, with a large back bowl in between.

A couple weeks ago the group who owns the little ski operation bought two new snowcats (‘pisanieves’) and they made corduroy roads deep up into the plataforma. Last year you needed snowshoes to get up here.

There are plans underway to create new infrastructure here, a gondola lift from the base that takes you all the way to the plataforma, with eventual development of these back bowls into runs similar to Cerro Catedral in Bariloche.

For the time being it’s quiet and deep powder conditions.

notes on the self-actualization represented by flea’s twitter account

Overview

Michael Peter Balzary (born October 16, 1962), better known by his stage name Flea, is an Australian-American bassist, trumpet player, and occasional actor. He is best known as the bassist and co-founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Aside from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he has collaborated with many artists, including Jane’s Addiction, Thom Yorke, The Mars Volta, and Alanis Morissette. Continue reading →