Thursday, January 31, 2013

A Herd of Turtles?

Most people are familiar with the nouns used to refer to collective groups of common terrestrial animals and birds: herd of cows, flock of birds, congress of baboons, litters of cats/kittens/puppies, to name a few. Everyone has also heard of schools of fish.


Here are a few more collective nouns to describe other marine and aquatic  animals (and no, it isn't a herd of turtles!):

A bale of turtles
A bed of clams or oysters
A gam, herd, school, or pod of whales
A herd or pod of seals (also a bob, colony, crash, harem, rookery, or spring of seals!)
A hover of trout
A knot of toads



A herd or pod of walruses
A pod or school of porpoises
A siege or shoal of herring
A shoal of bass (or of most fish species)
A smack of jellyfish



A pack of polar bears (sounds like the start of a tongue-twister, doesn't it?)
A seige or sedge of bitterns
A flight of cormorants
A glint of goldfish
A colony of gulls
A hedge, sedge, or seige of herons
A romp of otters (ottes also come in bevies, families, or rafts, but I like romp!)



A colony, cr`eche, huddle, parcel, or rookery of penguins
A congregation or wing of plovers
A run, school, or shoal of salmon
A shiver of shark

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