Are there more Kildeer in this photo than in the previous one? They blend into the background so well, I’ve lightened each of them up to make them more visible. This might be more Kildeer in one place than I have seen in total over many years of looking for birds.

How many do you see? Slightly to the left of the previous bunch, there are a bunch more. Walking around the sloughs at Don Edwards SF Bay National wildlife refuge the other day, I came across the following scene: There are a LOT of Kildeer in this muddy patch. A “dazzle” of Zebra (do they dazzle you?) It’s important, you know, to recognize these groups of wildlife by their proper title. But often the terms for a particular animal group are just fanciful, like dazzle of zebra, implausibility of gnus, charm of hummingbirds, or a siege of herons. Collective nouns for groups of animals are sometimes descriptive (herd of deer, flock of birds, colony of bats, pack of wolves, or school of fish), or sometimes pertinent to particular behaviors of animals, like a crash of rhinos, swarm of bees, caravan of camels, tower of giraffes, or pandemonium of parrots.