Birds Of DIFFERENT Feathers (Multiple Species) Flocking Together

[David Tame]

This is in the news today:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-en...starling-murmuration-captured-near-leominster

It reminded me of experiences from the early 1960s. I'd say around 1960-62.

As a child I saw something even more wonderful, but also inexplicable, totally unexplained. It was the 1960s, I was a child, but rational of mind and able to think and remember clearly, living on the outer edge of the city of Coventry.

One day I saw what seemed to be a "cloud" approaching which literally extended from horizon to horizon north to south, and was moving west quickly towards me. When it arrived, it turned out that it consisted entirely of birds, starting from something like only about fifty to seventy feet up - but it was a wide variety of birds all together, and this "cloud" which was not extensive in volume from top to bottom, nor from front to back (maybe each were 100 feet or so), nevertheless went literally from one horizon to the other - you could not see the end of it, which was astonishing. No sooner had it flown over, than another identical mass came again behind it, all keeping close together. The most unique aspects of these phenomena were the length from side to side - passing literally out of sight - but most of all that at least several species of birds ( I could not then name species) were all doing this together. I witnessed this from Henley Green, Coventry, UK where my home faced an extent of fields and I could see the true horizons. It happened so far as I recall in Spring or perhaps May.

But there's more. A year later in the same time of year, the identical phenomenon happened again, but only one "cloud" of varied birds this time without another behind it. It didn't repeat to my knowledge again... though one would have had to have been outdoors to have seen it. (It also from all the wings did make some noise.)

I have never anywhere heard of such a phenomenon, as a child I didn't know who to tell, and I've never anywhere heard of such a thing mentioned.

 

[GNC]

That video is lovely - they make a shape of a starling at rest halfway through, it seems.

Anyway, all those different birds at the one time might have been fleeing something, like a fire or some predators. Strange that it happened twice! Might it be an annual event?

 

[David Tame]

No idea. They cannot have been fleeing anything twice. And it wasn't annual afterwards so far as i know. And such a thing has never to my knowledge ever been described elsewhere or by anyone.

 

[GNC]

I suppose the law of averages would seem to state at some points a flock of mixed birds undertake a journey all at once, however rare that may be. If there is a variety of birds in my garden helping themselves to the feeders, and you disturb them, they do take off at the same time, though not necessarily in the same direction. Could your experience be caused by something manmade?

 

[David Tame]

I have no idea of the cause. Let me elaborate as a P.S. on how extraordinary this was. The "clouds" of birds were not at all as in the starling video I started with above - that just jogged my memory. They stuck closely and discreetly all together, but were in an absolutely unerring straight line from north to south and headed west. Since I could see from one horizon to the other, it means they extended over at least a mile, and who knows how far? They were unerringly just moving west, not swishing about as starlings. It almost *was* as if they were escaping something, though I don't want to throw suggestions out. From what I saw, there must have been at minimum hundreds of thousands of them.

 

[GNC]

That is amazing. Could they have been pursuing food, like a swarm of insects you couldn't make out in the sky?

 

[David Tame]

That is amazing. Could they have been pursuing food, like a swarm of insects you couldn't make out in the sky?

Thanks for the suggestion, but no. They seemed hell-bent on just going from A to B. It might have been half a mile away that I first saw them, or more. They kept in that absolute straight line which was about north to south, and just kept on flying west. Different species together? There are no insects that would behave in such a way as to attract that. But you raise a topic I don't remember the answer to, since insects are normally hunted near dawn and dusk: I don't recall time of day except that it was not near dawn or sunset. It was in the broad light of day. It got me to thinking even then, at a young age, about human nature, since this must have been visible to anyone outdoors in at least half of the city, but I was never later aware that anyone had mentioned it. Sometimes Forteana (as I might now call it) just go unrecognised as unusual by most people. Around that time there was also a kind of fish-fall, for example. One day after rainfall I found thousands of small dead crustaceans on the ground but also on any raised surface, at around the rate of ten to twenty per square yard. But they were small, easily not noticed by adults, and no one else remarked on them being there on the ground. I kept several for years in a souvenir ash tray, but i think at some point they went missing as my mother tidied up!

Back to the birds, and thinking about it after all this time, I do wonder: what innate behaviour, "force", or whatever, kept them so closely together - being of different species - and in such a straight line? I know of no other example of birds, especially of different species, being in such a straight line abreast. This was definitely "fortean" in the broadest sense - a mystery. I just have never forgotten this, but have never had a clue what it was about.

 

[James_H]

Could it be a mixed-species foraging flock aka 'bird wave'?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-species_foraging_flock

 

[David Tame]

Could it be a mixed-species foraging flock aka 'bird wave'?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-species_foraging_flock

Thanks for the suggestion, as this is new to me. But this sounds like birds hanging around and actually foraging. It says they move at 0.3 miles per hour. The birds I saw were in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, and were not stopping for anything - they were flying a good distance (I have to wonder how far) just as fast as they could fly. WIthin a very short time they reached me after I saw the dark mass maybe half a mile away. So no, this doesn't seem to be what it was.