The Art of Flying is a short film about “murmurations”: the mysterious flights of the Common Starling. It is still unknown how the thousands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms without colliding.
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Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
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If you can crack that nut you’ll also figure out how hive mind leftists think and spout Media Matters talking points like robots.
We never knew it until some birders discovered: a half million migrating shorebirds on a weekend in the springtime will layover in my hometown. They perform these aerial displays by type, and several are happening all at once. Don’t go there, though. It sucks.
Actually, back in 1986 a computer scientist named Craig Reynolds figured out that each individual bird only needed to follow 3 rules, and created a simulation called boids. Here is one implementation: https://owenmcnaughton.github.io/Boids.js/
That boids thing is pretty cool.
Just read about this phenom somewhere this morning, something about predator and prey (poids and sharks?), and each bird is constantly trying to get to the center of the herd to avoid becoming a victim. Dense urban areas demonstrate the same thing.
Me? A high speed moving target in a sparsely populated area is the place to be if survival is your goal.
I’ve seen similar flights of starlings. Circumstances were late summer, sunset, birds assembled each evening and put on a show. Darkness descended and they dispersed. That was in the northern fringe of the Corn Belt, 1958. If it was like here in the Central Sierra at that time of year, it might have been a flight of beetles or those insufferable face flies. We could have used a few million starlings over the last few years. Ips moved in this year, following the damned pine bark beetles. Bat populations enjoy that, but can’t keep up.
Crows are fun to stalk. We don’t have the large flocks here in the mountains like we had in the Midwest back then. Patience is critical. Don’t get me started.
Hey, Edward, leave them crows alone!
The Wall
I thought they were democrats trying to figure out a winning strategy. Everyone following everyone else, never arriving anywhere despite lots of movement and noise, nevermind the smell.
Ghost: I stalked them. I wasn’t hunting them. You must be very patient. They send out scouts before moving to another tree. I hopscotched all over the interior of a section of farm land getting closer and closer until I was right under the main flock.
I thought of adding to my first comment that if I had been ghostsniper, I could have put a 12 ga shell on the muzzle of a bb gun, pointed it upward, and bagged a bunch of crows. That would have been a gross error on my part. I’m glad I didn’t.
I have respect for crows. I just played ’em.
Ed: I’m a fan of crows, luvs em luvs em luvs em. And all the other creatures.
Yesterday the blue jays came back, finally, and they partook heavily on the new double shepherds hook I installed outside my north office door with 2 suets on it. A little later the BIG GURL came by and then the BIG BOY, a couple of pileated woodpeckers. Man they’re prehistoric, and their eyes are downright predatory. Scaled down pteradactyls and in flight they look like thunderbirds. The males have red on their cheeks. And do they ever talk their shit. The females are the worst. jabber jabber jabber, even while stabbing the suet with their beaks. When I hear her running that line I wait a few minutes then open the door scaring her off so that she doesn’t destroy the whole suet, the sparrow, cardinals, titmice, nuthatches and blackcap chickadees wanna eat to ya know. Someones gotta be in charge around here otherwise there’d be anarchy and misery for all, so I am the chosen one to regulate the wilderness ebt cards. heh
“Hey, Edward, leave them crows alone!”
I saw what you did there. Didn’t see the hint til just now.
I am plagued by blue jays. They shit all over the deck. I bought a couple plastic red tailed hawk decoys, the last at Tractor Supply. They work like a charm. I see the power company over around Cayucos uses owl decoys on their poles to keep birds off’n the lines along 101.
Identicle behavior can be seen in schools of fish like sardines for example.
Ed,
I love the squawking Blue Jay. It reminds me of mornings at my grandmothers’s house in WVA under a large sycamore and gum tree. Every time I hear them, it takes me back.
The crows at work hate me and sound the alarm as soon as I get out of my vehicle. I think they purposefully crap on my truck after I go into the building. Yes, I throw snowballs at them in the winter.
In Kansas: Face flies = Pecker Gnats. Hate ’em.