Mother Nature

At this time of year in Toronto, hundreds of starlings flock together at dusk in treetops and on phone lines all over town. The first time I saw this was just after I moved here in the fall of 1985. I was in the garden when I was aware of a kind of darkness that had settled all around me, and this incessant chirping. When I looked up, I had visions of a bloody-faced Suzanne Pleshette and a messed-up Tippi Hedren. This was my introduction to these garrulous birds.

Anyway, I just tripped over this video, shot in southern Scotland earlier this year. I find it utterly mesmerizing.

Keep an eye on the outer edge of the flock where a sparrow hawk is trying to pick off some dinner. It's very easy to miss that.

How they don't all go crashing into each other has to be one of the many many wonders of this beautiful world.

Comments

[Carla]

I've truly not seen that before. Thanks for posting it. Just incredible!

[arthurdecco]

We used to live on a farm just outside Newmarket, north of Toronto, where these birds congregated for a day every autumn. Literally hundreds of thousands of them would be clicking and chirping, cackling and quietly cawing like a huge freed beast afraid to show itself. Until without warning, they would rise from every bush, every tree, every weed in the horse paddocks - rise in their hundreds of thousands, painting the sky dark and musical and ever-shifting - until finally, bored with their collective, unreasonable panic, they would alight again, disappearing from sight but still audible to all but the stone cold deaf.

It was mesmerizing. It almost convinced me there must be a gawd.

Of course, I never thought to film them. They were always going to be there and so was I. Stupid, stupid.