Murmuration and other bird mysteries

 

Intrigued by the flocks of birds that performed unusual manoeuvres outside our windows on Saltspring, we learned that they're probably starlings doing something we'd never heard of before. The phenomenon called murmuration is a fall thing; birds fly together in tight formation, apparently to fend off predators, keep warm and tell each other about food sources. Photo by John Denniston. 

On the other side of the water, at Iona Beach Regional Park in Richmond, snow geese were carrying out their own fall ritual. They stop over in many areas of Metro Vancouver to rest and eat during their annual migration from arctic lands to warmer climes. Photo by John Denniston.

It’s fun to watch a lone hummingbird assume lordly possession of the back-porch feeder, a robin puff itself to twice its size in the birdbath, or a bluejay contemptuously kick aside the autumn leaves to search for goodies beneath. But these are humble, back-yard moments. They’re a different thing altogether from the eerie mystery of what great gatherings of birds get up to.

This year, possibly because Covid has meant more time for idle observation, I’ve been paying more attention to what birds do in bunches. On Saltspring this fall, we were intrigued by the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of rather ordinary, drab-looking birds swooping and looping past our windows, all flying together and changing direction on a dime, as if linked by a common brain.

That’s how I learned about murmuration – the phenomenon of birds, usually starlings, flying together in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns. Bird telepathy was the original explanation of how this was done, according to the website https://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/starling-murmurations, but later studies revealed something less psychic. Each bird simply keeps track of the movements of seven other birds around it, the website explains. “Considering all these little groups of seven touch on other individuals and groups of seven, twists and turns quickly spread. And from that, a whole murmuration moves.”

Here's a hint of what murmuration looks like, with groups of birds forming different patterns in the sky. Photo by John Denniston.

Our Saltspring version was rather modest because of the size of the flock, but web videos  (https://phys.org/news/2019-02-starling-murmurations-science-nature-greatest.html) are more impressive. When thousands of starlings get together, they can blacken, then lighten, the sky in ever-changing, ever dividing and reconnecting waves and circles and columns.

Then there are the snow geese, who stop in various areas of Metro Vancouver on their annual migration from arctic lands to the warmer south of the continent. They seemed like a visitation from another world when we saw them at Iona Beach Regional Park this week, whitening the shore and drifting like snow on the water. Their chatter was constant, an interrogative screeching, and I wondered what they were telling each other in all those thousands of exchanges. On the shore, feisty young geese snapped at each other and flapped their wings like bullying teenagers, while their tired elders snoozed on their feet, heads tucked under wings. They ignored the photographers standing mere feet away, but when a trio of dogs raced along the shoreline, they rose squawking, forming waves of white mystery against the autumn sky.

 

The snow geese in Richmond, resting up for their migration ahead, were remarkably calm about photographers getting close. Photo by John Denniston.

But add some dogs, who surely thought this the best sport in the world, and the geese were off the beach in an instant. Photo by John Denniston.

Uprooted, they joined their companions in the water, there to sleep some more. Photo by John Denniston.