MoorHens

ec2-18-218-168-16.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com | ToothyWiki | RecentChanges | Login | Webcomic

Seemingly the second most populous waterfowl in Cambridge after mallards (the bog-standard Duck), MoorHens are smaller than ducks and coloured black. They have red or yellow beaks, and spindly green-yellow legs. Their heads bob when they walk or swim.

Their most notable feature is that their various bird calls all sound like someone experimenting with a squeaky toy (such as, for example, RubberDucks. See? It all fits!)

: What? RubberDucks experimenting with a squeaky toy? But... Oh, wait a minute... ChemistryFaculty?... Biology experiments... rather close to the Cam... It *does* all fit... --AlexChurchill, worried

Common places for finding MoorHens include the park behind MillLane? lecture rooms, and in those narrow canal-type thingies around the Backs?.

CategoryDuck

>_< --Requiem

Why is this a wince? I'm currently boggling at "MoorHens are smaller than ducks". MoorHens ARE a type of duck. As are geese and a whole bunch of other things. To use the StandardTest?: "If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it makes quacking noises and even, damnit, is uncontestably a WaterFowl? and swims and stuff - then damnit, it's probably a duck unless you're also in Cambridge in which case it has an equal chance of being a college fellow." Um, maybe that test isn't so standard after all. And maybe it ought to be WaterFowl? instead of the much EasierToThink? CategoryDuck. (Which has another advantage of being CategoryAwfulPun inducing.)

I did say when I created CategoryDuck that it might as well serve to cover all WaterFowl?. Should I put "MoorHens are smaller than mallards?" -- PaulPower

: Llamas are larger than frogs... --Vitenka

(PeterTaylor) For what definition of "Duck"? WikiPedia, for example, claims that ducks are Anatidae, whereas MoorHens are Rallidae.

: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and says it's a duck, but is not a duck, then it's not a duck! --Requiem, who has no objection to this page (and, indeed, pages on low-flying objects) being in CategoryDuck.