Odd Bird Behavior Around Moving Cars & Other Vehicles

[Spookdaddy]

...We approached a spot where we could see a large number of dark birds (apparently starlings) on the ground on both sides of the road. As we approached within something like 100 yards, they all lifted off and began to coalesce into a flying murmuration (i.e., a discernible but loose formation akin to one or more "streams" of birds). The birds collectively swooped and swirled, slowing elevating themselves higher and higher off the ground.

When we closed to around 20 - 30 yards, a large number of the birds (think of it as a sub-stream or branch of the overall murmuration) changed course and flew en masse directly at our van. They didn't waver or dodge; they simply flew into us at full speed. They battered against the van's front end and windshield with a sound like a heavy hailstorm, with their bodies flying / falling every which way...

Given that there seems to be no universally agreed theory as to why murmurations occur, there’s clearly a problem when trying to analyse how and why they go wrong. Unfortunately, I’ve never witnessed an epic murmuration first hand, but I have seen many more modestly sized ones, and in most of those a raptor of some kind was either visible or audible within the vicinity. This latter factor makes me wonder if a couple of episodes from my own experience could be relevant. This is a quote from the Strange Bird Behaviour thread (post #3):

Then I noticed that the birds were acting very oddly. They were in a kind of frenzy - skittering around at pavement level, virtually flying into each other in apparent panic - and the woods which line the uphill side of the road were unusually noisy with alarm calls.

I had once or twice seen a sparrowhawk in the area, but the level of activity seemed over the top even for such an efficient predator - it was almost as if the birds were trying to bury themselves under the ground in order to get away from whatever it was they feared and their panic seemed so all consuming that they didn't appear to even register my presence. In fact, they were flying so close to me that I reckon I could have reached out and plucked them from the air.

Once I'd become conscious of the unusual activity around me I actually stopped walking - initially because I thought I might get a glimpse of the sparrowhawk I mentioned. And then something made crane back and look directly above me and I experienced one of those, to my mind, truly Fortean moments when you register that you're seeing something that really shouldn't be there, before you've even registered what it actually is that really shouldn't be there in the first place.

What I saw circling lazily above me and riding the thermals as if it owned the bloody place was only, I kid you not, a bloody enormous vulture. This is in NW Derbyshire, mind you.

I suspect what it was the Staffordshire escapee, Bones...

I also mention on the Bird Courts / Crow Courts (AKA Bird Parliaments) thread (post #32) a couple of other incidents – including being crashed into by crows that were so concentrated on mobbing an owl that either they did not notice me, or they did not care that I was in the way.

I wonder if this sort of behaviour might explain the catastrophic fail involved in your experience, and in others that have been reported. The flock is so invested in a mass act of evasion in regard to one primal hazard that it fails to take into account another more modern one.

 

[EnolaGaia]

IMHO the most economical interpretation is that once the birds launch into "murmuration mode" (join the crowd and immerse themselves into self-placement and coordination of movement relative to the others as their innate 'murmuration logic' dictates ... ) they're orienting and reacting with primary regard to the murmuration per se rather than the surrounding environment.

I think of it as being similar to those funny accident videos in which people are so caught up in (e.g.) dancing they don't notice they're about to fall off a stage / run into something / get hit by someone or something approaching.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

I think they enjoy divebombing around my bicycle when I'm speeding along like little x-wings. They seem to know they're not going to get splattered.