Yikes !
I was in my office with the windows closed when I heard a sound that I couldn’t identify. At first I thought it was the wind because I could see the tree branches bending; but, it wasn’t that type of sound. It was more like a shrill buzzing and was getting louder by the second.
Of course I ran to the window and that’s when I saw, to my amazement, a swarm of birds so thick and large that it nearly turned the sky black. They were small and dark and their wings beat frantically as they whirled overhead. I guess it was the wings that were making the noise.
When I went outside I watched in awe as the swarm flew over me … some of them perching for a brief second on a tree branch but then forging ahead with the others. It lasted about 10 minutes and then they were gone !
I’ve watched migrating birds many times over the years but this was entirely different. These little guys seemed to be running (flying) scared and it’s left me to wonder … was Hurricane Sandy just a wing‘s breath away?
Has anyone else experienced this and what’s your take on it?
posted by Ginnie at 4:13 PM
11 Comments:
Wow, what an image you shared. Poor little birds, trying to evacuate ahead of the storm. I hope you are safe and sound.
It sounds like quite an experience. How are things going down there?
Those birds are starlings migrating in a flock. The storm may have caused them to fly inland as the flyway is along the coast. The noise they make is because they take "roll call" when they arrive at a destination.
Dianne
I have seen starlings fly in huge numbers like that. Amazing how they sweep and turn.
We see this quite often through the year in our area Ginnie. There is a lot of farm fields around us and as you drive down the country roads, you can see the swarms of birds fly back and forth. They are mostly Starlings flying from field to field.
This is normal in our area.
Love Di ♥
Probably some kind of blackbirds. Amazing though. I did see a blizzard of monarchs one time presumably on their way to Mexico...:)
I found your website through a random stroke of luck. It helped me do my research on this topic. I have spent lots of time looking through your site. You have something good going here, keep it up!
Such large numbers of birds in flocks may become a thing of the past. Migrating song birds are way down in numbers. The forests may become silent. The major cause of this is loss of habitat and the continued use of DDT. This is banded in North American, but made here and sold and used extensively in South America.
I love to see snow birds in flocks. They are properly called snow buntings. The seen to appear just before snow storms and fly and swoop together across the fields. Other times you never seem to see them.
When I hear of great flocks of birds I think of the tragic story of the passenger pigeon. They were hunted to extinction but in earlier times the sky would be dark with them for days at a time. It turned out they would only continue to breed in large breeding colonies so the whole species collapsed. Shame on us.
I concur that your birds could well be starlings. They are a noisy lot in flocks.
I was on the beach the other day and a huge flock of tree swallows came by. It's migration time. Perhaps the storm had something to do with it, but I think it is more than likely a seasonal phenomenon and natural occurrence.
My first reaction, Ginnie, was to wonder if Alfred Hitchcock was in the neighborhood. But I think that it may well have been a mass migration before the storm.
If these were starlings, they were an unwelcome noisy lot in our town and used to sweep into the trees where we lived as I was growing up. The sky would be black and if they spent the night in our trees, the ground would be a mess in the morning.
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