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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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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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.