A group of Juncos?  A junk?  A junket?  A junkette?  A jump of Juncos?  Perhaps a clutter?  Or a flutter?  Better yet a scatter of Juncos.  They’re often bouncing about on the ground like marbles being scattered by a child.  I need a noun, the Juncos are daily the most numerous creature in our garden, always moving about flying into and out of the bushes and trees that overlook the feeders.

And Killdeer?  We saw several of them seemingly frozen on the lawn of the Eden Vale Winery. We were there to do nutritional research this afternoon.  The wines were very nutritious we felt.  The Killdeer were very cold.  They seemed to be there to tend the lawns. The birds barely moved even when Bridget jumped out of the car.  A band of Killdeer?  A resurrection?  A mortality?  A Ploverhood of Killdeer?  I’m not finding the right collective noun.  This afternoon they could well have been an icing of Killdeer.

A single male California Quail was perched on top of a patch of berry brambles.  Nearby was his covey, no doubt.  And “covey of quail” serves well and I wouldn’t presume to pretend I could improve on that.

In the bushes next to the winery’s fancy Victorian mansion, I could hear the squabbles of a group of House Sparrows.  Perhaps it should be a “squabble of sparrows?”  Or a din?  A jabber?  A jabberwocky of sparrows? A perturbation of Passer domesticus?  A racket? A discord?  A chirp?  A sputter of sparrows?  In this particular instance what I could hear was a thicket of sparrows.

Overhead were numerous Starlings, in the taller trees and on rooftops around the winery.  Whistles, cat-calls, the usual Starling sounds.  A galaxy of Starlings?  A universe?  A perverse?  A free verse of Starlings because you never know what they’ll say next.  A shrill might be the most apt.  This cold, gray afternoon it was definitely a shrill of Starlings all around. 

Three Canada Geese flew over the vineyards, calling as they headed up the valley, perhaps headed for their next round of golf.  As domestic as they’ve become, their calls are still a wild thrill to hear.  Surely not a honk of Canada Geese.  Not merely a flock, or a float or a course of geese.  A fairway of geese?  A headway? A skein is nice in its season,  but these birds only move about in the valley, not migrating.  In the air they could be a flight, a squadron, a calling of geese.  Better yet, their large bodies pulled through the air by heavily flapping, dark winds, this must have been truly a moment when the sound harkens back to distant times, to places we will never go, to unpeopled lakes in unrecorded times across untold miles of untrammeled territory.  So those semi-domestic geese, so bent on their next landing, their next meal, their next fairway, they were in their way a “wildness of Canada Geese.”

Near our garden this morning a flock of about three dozen Cedar Waxwings came to rest briefly in our neighbor’s little birch grove.  They only stayed a few seconds, then whirled up into the air and down the valley.

A pair does not a covey make.  Those two California Quail were photographed by May Woon in the Strybing Arboretum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Location:     243 Granite Street, Ashland
Observation date:     11/26/07
Number of species:     15

Mallard     5
Mourning Dove     1
Anna’s Hummingbird     1
Northern Flicker     1
Steller’s Jay     2
Western Scrub-Jay     2
Black-capped Chickadee     3
Mountain Chickadee     2
Red-breasted Nuthatch     1
Hermit Thrush     2
American Robin     6
Cedar Waxwing     35
Spotted Towhee     2
Song Sparrow     1
Dark-eyed Junco     40
courtesy: eBIRD