The 2025 San Diego Bird Festival took wing on February 25 and will return to earth tomorrow, March 2. The annual Festival includes 150 programs and activities.

I’m not only a word botcher. I’m a bird watcher. So I’m going to take you under my wing and tell you that words of a feather flock together and our fowl language is strictly for the birds.

Even a bird-brained cuckoo has little trouble figuring out how we derived the noun “crane” for a hoisting machine or the verb ”to crane” to depict the act of stretching one’s neck to obtain a better view. But it takes an eagle eye to spot the crane hiding in “pedigree” and “cranberry.”

Perhaps you are proud of your dog’s or cat’s or your own pedigree, but did you know that pedigree gets its pedigree from the French phrase “foot of a crane” (Latin pes, “foot” + de, “of” + grus, “crane”)? Why? Well, a little bird told me that if you trace a pedigree on a genealogical table, you find that the three-line figures of lineal descent resemble a crane’s foot.

Cranberries take their name from the Low German Kraanbere, “crane berry,” because cranes often inhabit the bogs where the berries flourish.

Don’t duck duck etymologies. The name of the fowl and the verb both derive from Old English duce, meaning “diver.” When you duck, you stoop or bend down suddenly in the manner of a diver. We are advised to use duct tape to provide protection against hurricanes and flooding.

You may be surprised to find that the original name of the cloth-backed, waterproof adhesive product was “duck tape,” so called because it repels water.

Before the adoption of the 20 th Amendment in 1930, a president or congressman who was defeated or failed to run for re-election in November remained in office until the following March 4 (March forth!). The nickname for such hangers-on was “lame duck,” which came from an old hunters’ maxim: “Never waste powder on a dead duck.” Because these ducks were not entirely dead until March, some clever wag called them lame ducks, and the label stuck.

You know that a bunch of sheep crowded together is a flock, a group of antelope loping together a herd, a cluster of fish swimming together a school, and a crowd of bees buzzing together a swarm. But have you ever heard of a crash of rhinoceroses, a clowder of cats, a gam of whales, or a knot of frogs?

Most of these collective nouns evolved during the Middle Ages, when the sophisticated art of hunting demanded an equally sophisticated vocabulary to name the objects of the chase.

Here’s a flight of 30 avian assemblages, a groupie list that’s truly for the birds:a cast of hawks, a charm of finches, a chain of bobolinks, a congregation of plovers, a convocation of eagles a covey of quail, a descent of woodpeckers, an exaltation of larks, a flush of mallards, a gaggle of geese a huddle of penguins, a murder of crows (but only if there are probable caws), a murmuration of starlings, a muster of storks, a nye of pheasants, an ostentation of peacocks, a paddling of ducks, a pandemonium of parrots, a piteousness of doves, a plump of wildfowl, a pouch of pelicans, a rafter of turkeys, a scold of jays, a siege of herons, a tiding of magpies, a ubiquity of sparrows, an unkindness of ravens, a wake of buzzards, a watch of
nightingales, a wedge of swans (when flying in a V formation).

A group of owls is called a parliament because an owl was often depicted accompanying Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Then there’s the wonderful “a flamboyance of flamingos.” Both “flamingo” and “flamboyance” descend from Spanish and Portuguese “flamengo,” “flame-colored.”