BY THE THOUSANDS

Murmuration; This time of year when food is getting hard to find, birds form up in large groups. There is safety in numbers and their search for food can find every morsel wherever they land. Blackbirds, (Grackles and starlings) by the thousands or many thousands, they are famous for that collective behavior. It is not uncommon to see them perched together on power lines, shoulder to shoulder. Last week I was driving on the interstate where a high voltage transmission line crossed the highway. The sun was still low in the east but I couldn’t help but notice those blackbirds perched on every cable like soldiers in formation that stretched as far as I could see. I was hoping to see some close order, tight formation flying but they weren’t ready yet. 

Blackbirds in the act of formation flying is called a ‘Murmuration’. That swarming, swooping concentration of birds, all following one leader; one can’t help but stop what you are doing and watch as they climb and swerve and fall away like a self propelled cloud. We’ve all seen PBS specials on sea life where huge schools of small fish swim so close together they must be touching, changing direction every few seconds. The birds do it in the air, all the wing flapping and course corrections and nobody crashes. Instinct doesn’t wait for a vote, like Yoda said in the movie Star Wars, “Do or do not!” When so many blackbirds “Do!” I get slack-jawed and marvel. 

I live in a social culture where we think about everything. When that low profile instinct that still works for us, when it chimes in we tend to believe we were thinking about it to begin with. We take thinking to extremes. When we think about our thoughts or about what others may be thinking it has a name; ‘Metacognition’. That’s how we negotiate; “Will they sell it for less than they are asking; and if not, will I buy it anyway?” We think a lot but even at that, we act on feelings before we can think. When one feels the Fight-or-Flight emotion they have defaulted to the animal at the core of our being.

Once upon a time in a far-away land like Ohio or Pennsylvania, where the Unitarian Church had stain glass windows; a little stain but mostly frosted glass. You couldn’t see outside still it let lots of light in. My hosts and I were either thinking about the sermon or something else, maybe navel gazing, I don’t remember but something extraordinary happened. All at once both the sky and stain glass windows grew dark and a muffled, rustling sound grew louder and louder. The minister spoke louder but the distraction was too much and everybody stared in awe at the windows. The din of noise was surreal, unrelenting and you could see the shadows of birds, fluttering against the windows, trying to avoid mid-air collisions and crashes.

From beginning to end, the murmuration that had swooped down on us lasted maybe 20 seconds but the effect was too much to simply resume the sermon. She changed the subject to ‘Murmurations’, reflecting a good knowledge of the phenomenon and what we might take from our experience that morning. I thought, how much would I have to pay for that experience if someone were selling tickets? The possibility of being there, aware in that moment; I am always prepared to stop what I’m doing and give myself to it. If I’m driving then the conditions dictate how much license I can afford to take with my life and others on the road but I will squeeze it for all I can get. 

I am convinced that humans are animals, mammals with extraordinary adaptations and attributes that allow us to think about thinking and about what others are thinking about us. We have stumbled our way forward with language, creative insight and never before patterns of social interaction: Civilization. When I pay attention to nature telling its story with sandhill cranes lifting off the water or standing in the shadow of an 1,800 year-old California Redwood, or by the precision and beauty of murmurations, I feel small. Even with my big brain and bright ideas, the stories I tell and the memories I treasure, I am just a fiber in the thread of life, a fleeting glimmer in nature’s scheme and that’s enough.