Tag: cows

The Animal Kingdom: 38

And we have another fine offering, just in time for the Halloween Blue Moon! I give you Installment #38 of my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.

  1. Once the weather turns cold, this rush rushes off.
  2. A wing on the wing casts one big shadow!
  3. A rake is hardly rakish,
  4. And a wisp isn’t wispy.
  5. But does a bellowing bellow?
  6. I doubt the flink will flink this link!
Rush member in no rush, Alsace, France
  1. Rush of migrating birds
  2. Wing of dragons
  3. Rake of colts [1]
  4. Wisp of snipe [2]
  5. Bellowing of bullfinches [3]
  6. Flink of cows [4]
Flink, Sardinia, Italy
This herd may contain a rake… northern Thailand

NOTES: [1] Everything you ever wanted to know about horses but were afraid to ask….: “In horse racing, particularly for Thoroughbreds in the United Kingdom, a colt is defined as an uncastrated male from the age of 2 up to and including the age of 4.” Wild 1 to 2-year colts are driven from their herds by the herd stallion. Once driven out, they usually form a bachelor herd. “They stay with this band until they are mature enough to form their own herd of mares.” A foal is a horse of either sex less than 1 year old. A yearling is either sex, aged 1-2. A filly is a young female horse. A mare is an adult female horse. A stallion is an uncastrated adult male horse. A gelding is a castrated male. A rig or ridgling is an incompletely castrated male horse. Wikipedia.org [2] A snipe is a slender-billed bird from the sandpiper family. [3] The name bullfinch comes from its stocky shape and thick neck. [4] Flink refers to 12 cows or more. And, according to the Urban Dictionary, to flink is the act of forwarding a web link or address to someone electronically.

 © Jadi Campbell 2017. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Fun animal names from en.wiktionary.org,  www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

The Trail Back Out is finished and available for purchase! In my new collection of short stories, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

 

The Animal Kingdom: A Brood

Patiently waiting for the full moon to rise, Hampi, India

India is good for a surprise around any corner and on any street. We once passed a band of musicians blowing horns and banging drums, marching nonchalently down the middle of the road. Cows, of course, are sacred in the Hindu faith and go wherever they damn well please.

And on our way to the airport near Bhopal, our taxi driver asked if we wanted to halt and watch a truck feed the passengers.

They were transporting a brood of hens to market. [1] Properly defined, a brood is the family produced at a single hatching. This group had to be several broods. [2]

Unbuckling the passengers, so to speak….
Hey! Are we there yet?
Everyone likes a chance to stretch their legs

We were bemused by how healthy the hens were, and how agreeable to being transported together in baskets. They promptly headed for the field and their feed – and then back to the roadside to be placed again in baskets.

Chickens can’t fly (although they will get a running start and stay airborne for a second or two). There are more chickens than any other bird. According to  Wikipedia, “[t]he domestic chicken is descended primarily from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus).” They’re a gregarious species, and chicks are both incubated and raised communally.

The brood didn’t brood long with lunch being served [2]

We didn’t witness any of the usual pecking order. Maybe these hens were too hungry.

What’s for dessert?

Later that night over dinner (no, I don’t recall if I ordered a chicken dish) we talked about animal husbandry. The fowl transport truck seemed to both of us much less cruel than an industrial chicken factory.

Don’t be such a cluck

NOTES: [1] We were told these were Chinese hens, but I have not been able to find that breed anywhere. If my readers can identify this bird for me, I would be grateful. [2] Brood as a verb is also when a bird sits on the eggs to keep them warm with his or her body heat and hatch them. © Jadi Campbell 2017. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Go to A Clowder, A Cluster, or A Cornucopia for earlier posts on specific animal groups.

Sources for chickens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken and https://animalcorner.co.uk/animals/chickens/

Fun animal names from www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

 

 

 

%d bloggers like this: