Posted on 12/20/2017 7:01:27 AM PST by Western Phil
Last Saturday or so was the beginning of the Audubon Christmas bird count. More or less coincidently, I started tossing out a little bird food on the patio. Usually I do that a little earlier, but due to global warming and the fact that Atlanta and Long Island have been hogging all our snow, I haven't gotten around to it before now. In the afternoon some birds appeared, most were the usual juncos, some were English sparrows, one chickadee and some crows in the tall trees in the northeast corner of the lot. Those did not come to the patio. Then my wife said there is a blue jay. I did not see a blue jay, but did see something smaller and gray with the head feather thinge. Not being set up to use the Audubon hand gun bird identification technique, I finally remembered my camera and got a not very good picture of one of them. Perusing the bird book resulted in the name "tufted tit-mouse".
Now since there were two of them, did we have tufted tit-mice or tufted tit-mouses?
We had not seen them before.
Q: What is the plural of global warming?
A: Morons.
According to the etymology the root words mean tiny muscle. I get the tiny part in relation to birds and some other tits but certainly not all of them, and none of them are muscular. Not very helpful. I still say titmice, that’s what my parents say or said and that’s what the majority of birding books say.
As is done for Attorneys General,
tufted tits-mouse
Mouses.
Three Hens French, two Tits Mice and a Partridge in a pear tree.
What’s plural of mongoose? Hippopotamus?
Hee hee hee!
Oh, those NY delis! *sigh*
Ok Don’t get me started on Canadian Geese.
One goose is a Canadian Geese. A flock is bunch of noisy, dirty Canadian Geese.
Never Goose, and never Geeses.
Ours always arrive with chickadees.
Whichever way you like and “tuff titty” to anyone who doesn’t like it.
So...anybody know the plural of robin redbreast? (Would it be, “robin redsbreast”, robin’s redbreasts or “robin redbreasts”. Okay, fifth graders. Get to work! ;)
Actually, it CANADA geese.
As long as you don’t use “defiantly” where the correct word is “definitely,” you can call tit-mouses whatever you want.
(I see this a lot, and it is cringeworthy.)
Whichever way you like and “tuff titty” to anyone who doesn’t like it.
We always said, “tuff titties”. (Or “stuff kitties”, as my autocorrect says) Just one sounds just not right.
As long as you don’t use “defiantly” where the correct word is “definitely,” you can call tit-mouses whatever you want.
(I see this a lot, and it is cringeworthy.)
They’re just definitely, defiantly doing it to make you cringe. (I wonder...is the past tense of cringe, cringed or scrounged?)
Sigh...crunged. Darned autocorrect.
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