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I have searched for this and found no definitive answer or answers.

This website says it is a parliament, where as this one lists several others (conventicle, gulp, mischief, tidings or tittering) and an old BBC article says tiding, charm or gulp.

None of them have references and the popular online dictionaries don't seem to list a group of magpies as one of the definitions for any of these words. Compare this with "murder", which they do define as a group of crows.

This question has also been asked on Quora, but the responses seem to be verbatim quotes from the above sites, again with no references.

Matthew Wilson
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    Your question asked for 'the' collective noun. Why do you think there is only one right answer? – Michael Harvey Dec 09 '20 at 12:05
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    I would use "bakery". ;) – Hot Licks Dec 09 '20 at 14:11
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    39 Terms of Venery A tiding* of magpies, a gulp of magpies, a mischief of magpies, a conventicle of magpies a tittering of magpies.* Most such terms are latter-day "urban myth / old wives tales" though. You might not find *any* of my examples in Victorian or earlier text, back when *in theory* they should have been in use. So as @MichaelHarvey says, there's not really a "right" answer here. – FumbleFingers Dec 09 '20 at 14:41
  • Whimsical people of a certain type (I shall say no more) are prone to inventing silly words for things, and birds attract more than their fair share of these. – Michael Harvey Dec 09 '20 at 15:02

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According to an article from the Oxford University Press, (now on Lexico), it's a tiding of magpies...but really, it's not clear that most of these sorts of collective nouns ever really caught on, so while OUP is a reputable source, there may not be a "correct" answer, as such.

Another article from Oxford also notes:

The etymologist Michael Quinion has noted that the first collection (not the official term) of collective nouns in English is The Book of St Albans, printed in 1486 in three parts on the subjects of hawking, hunting, and heraldry. In the sixteenth century, the book was apparently reprinted many times over, which kept the lists of birds and beasts in the public consciousness, and indeed many of the nouns are still in circulation today. Not all however: as Quinion notes, some strike a colourful chord but have never quite caught on, including a fall of woodcocks and a shrewdness of apes.

Ryan M
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