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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He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
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
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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.