Goose Crossingl

Baloo and I had to pause our morning stroll to wait for a gaggle of geese to cross the road.  

They were not the least bit alarmed and waddled to the bay in a very leisurely manner. 

When we finally made it up to the boat launch, there was another gaggle that gawked at us as we made our way to the end of the dock to get Baloo a drink of water. 

Being something of a language geek, I had to look up other options for what one might call a gathering of geese. Though gaggle has been my favorite since childhood (my father had a fabulous book called An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton that I absolutely loved), I learned a couple new ones that tickled me. My two new favorites being plump and skein. 

Skein is primarily used as a term for a flock in flight formation, and it seems entirely appropriate, as they string themselves out and flow like a skein of yarn being unwound. 

Plump is just humorous, since geese are generally sort of rounded birds, but the term also refers to any group of wild fowl and I wasn't able to easily track down the word's origin in this particular usage. The best guesses seemed to have it being derived from "clump" or "lump".

Aren't you glad you checked the blog today? Trivia simply abounds! :)