This puzzles uses the collective nouns or terms of venery for birds.

The list at the top of the puzzle consists of items that can be grouped according to different collective nouns. The collective nouns that are used are the ones used to describe the birds on the left-hand side of the equations at the bottom of the puzzle.

For example, the words Atacama, Kalahari, and Karakum are all deserts. The collective noun for lapwings is desert (the second bird of the first equation is a lapwing).

Once you’ve identified all of the birds on the left-hand side of the equation and categorized all of the items in the list, count up the number of items in each grouping. The number of items in a grouping is the number that the bird described by that collective noun represents in the equations.

Picture	Bird	Noun	Items	Number of Items
	SWIFT	SCREAM	Wilhelm	1
	MALLARD	FLUSH	K♣ 10♣ 7♣ 6♣ 2♣ Q♦ J♦ 8♦ 4♦ 3♦	2
	LAPWING	DESERT	Atacama Kalahari Karakum	3
	SPARROW	HOST	Kimmel Norton Sajak Winfrey	4
	CROW	MURDER	Borden Bundy Holmes Kaczynski Manson Rader	6
	CRANE	SEIGE	’s-Hertogenbosch Bastogne Leningrad Masada Sevastopol Tenochtitlan Thessalonica	7
	PENGUIN	COLONY	Basutoland Ceylon French Indochina Gold Coast Jamestown Massachusetts Bay Plymouth Roanoke Southern Rhodesia	9

Solve the left-hand side of each equation to get a number. Now, identify the birds in the right-hand side of the equations and their collective nouns. The number of blanks for each right-hand bird is the length of the collective noun. Use the number computed by the left-hand side of the equation to index into the collective noun of the bird on the right-hand side. This produces a letter.

For example, the sixth equation is [CROW] / [MALLARD] = [GUINEAFOWL]. This becomes 6 / 2 = [RASP]. 6 / 2 = 3 and indexing into RASP gives the letter S.

Do this for each equation to read down the answer: ASCENSION, which is itself a collective noun for a group of larks.