Well if we are getting onto language, it is those - teachers and pedants and others - who insist on the correct collective nouns for things.


No, no, no, no.

Let's take 'a parliament of owls' as an example. It is called that, I assume, because someone someday saw a group of owls together and said to his mate that they looked as solemn as a group of members of Parliament, his mate liked the joke and passed it on, and so the joke has spread.

Or an exultation of larks. Again, someone, somewhere was moved to poetry when referring to them and it caught on.

So it is not about 'correctness'. These are moments of humanity taken into our language. So if you are moved to refer to a melody of larks or some owls are so still that you refer to a statuary of owls, great: you are open to the poetry of the thing. Unlike the flatfoot who says that is showing your ignorance and you have to use the collective noun 'parliament'.