Whenever they aren’t chilling out on some seaweed-covered rock, oystercatchers seem permanently frantic. They’ll be standing there, perfectly content, then suddenly explode into frantic whirling flights and even more frantic high-pitched piping ticks for no reason whatsoever.
My dictionary says the noun associated with frantic is franticness. I don’t think this does oystercatchers justice: oystercatchers are in a permanent state of frant; they are frantic messes. Apparently, the collective noun for oystercatchers is a covey. But that’s rubbish. The collective noun for oystercatchers should be a frant: ‘a frant of oystercatchers sped by’. Frant ought to be a verb, too, related to the verb to rant, as in ‘a pair of oystercatchers franted on the rocks’.
Frant = frantic rant, or rant frantically. (Pass it on.)
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