-popular place for a "colony" of gulls and a "muster" of crows.

According to my sources, a group of crows is called a "murder" (!). :o) Hmmmm!

Several years ago I lived in Lacombe. Crows would stage there prior to heading south. I estimated numbers approaching 10,000. That would be more than a murder; a massacre perhaps. If collective nouns interest you I recommend a peek here: http://www.rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml

"kittyhawk", -we've been having fun with the "group names" and "Rangifer" even has invented some that I like better than what appear in this link: ( http://www.birdnature.com/groupnames.html )

I think I'd be a little worried if I lived in Lacombe - "massacre", indeed! Shades of Hitchcock's "The Birds"! Jim & JB, I will check out those links. When I was teaching Gr. 5, we had a story about a baby eagle & part of the teachers' info section had list of group names for various animals - winged & not - and some of them were really funny: a "wake" of buzzards, a "cover" of coots, a "convocation" of eagles, a "kettle" of hawks (when flying in large numbers), a "scold" of jays, a "parliament" of owls, an "unkindness" of ravens" - to mention only a very few. I wonder who decides these things?!