There’s a special, sometimes peculiar, name for birds when they flock together. For example, widgeons become a knot, pheasants a bouquet, raptors a cauldron, finches a charm, geese a gaggle and storks a mustering.
My favorite, for a personal reason, is murder of crows.
A half dozen women, some journalists and mothers like myself, and all of us not what you would call young chicks, became good friends shortly after I moved to Ogden in 1979. We started getting together once a week for lunch, where we were loud with our laughter and bountiful with our irreverence.
One of the women’s children, a 17-year-old boy, in jest, called us just a bunch of old crows. We liked it, and so named ourselves The Murder of Crows.
As an addendum to the story was that the boy’s mother and I were both tennis players, and probably stymied that we didn’t take offense at being called crows, the boy challenged his mother and me to a tennis game with him and one of his classmates.
We accepted – and Margaret and I beat the 17-year-old boys soundly. It wasn’t that we were that good, but that she and I had the benefit of wisdom that comes with age. We would dink the ball just over the net, a move the boys hadn’t expected and one they couldn’t seem to overcome. Also, the boys’ powerful serves often went out of bounds while our serves almost always were in bounds. All we had to do then was return the serve just barely over the net.
I still smile thinking about that game.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Pat Bean's blog 
Nice strategy, crows! Plus I didn’t know that storks were a muster!