"Avian Performance Art" (December 1, 2005)

Driving home from Mendocino this past December, my husband David and I saw an amazing sight. To the East of Hwy. 101 just North of Healdsburg, flying over the vineyards and distant low hills of the Dry Creek region, were huge flocks of something. I say "something" because at first it wasn't apparent what the flocks were composed of. Insects? Birds?Confused bats?

What drew our eye (and caused my husband to wake me from my motion-induced slumbers) was the way that the flocks formed and shifted, causing visibly recognizable shapes to appear, including a tadpole, and other weird geometric forms. This was both a little freaky, and a whole lot of amazing. In fact, it was so cool and distracting that we got off the freeway and found a frontage road to drive on, figuring that the road less traveled was far safer for our slack-jawed gawking.

We chased the flock, and as we approached, discovered that it was composed of thousands of birds, although they were still too far away to get an accurate species ID. I suspected that they were blackbirds; the general size and shape were correct, as well as

their agricultural location. Flying blackbirds have always reminded me of mobile pluses and minuses, with their wing and body lengths about equal to the eye, and this flock exhibited those traits.

But wow, what a mindblowing display of "flock consciousness". I have never seen anything quite like it. Although there may well be logical and scientific explanations for what we saw, it still raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was art and magic on the wing.

Debbie Viess

A version of this essay was first published on Calbirds.