Really cool bird formation

I saw this video and I found it pretty cool! the way the birds are in almost perfect formation. Couldnt find any other board to put it on, Hopefully mods can find a home for it. But back to the birds it looks like a virtual creature in the sky. Has anyone else seen anything like this, maybe even better?

cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com...

[edit on 7/8/2008 by SHADO13]

That is pretty crazy. I remember my dad showing me birds doing that when we were driving to Cornwall going on holiday, birds following an exact formation and putting the red arrows to shame. nice find OP if i could give a star on my poopy net i would

That's really cool! Thanks for sharing it. They almost look like a swarm of locusts in the way that they move and the sheer number of them.

I've had the opportunity to see this in real life, and it's really a sight to see. And the sound of thousands of beating wings... Eerie. Such sights are of course very bad news for farmers as a swarm like that can have devastating effects on a crop.

The most amazing thing is seeing them move like it's one large creature and not hundreds of individuals. As if they communicate their each and every move to each other.

Amazing how fluid it is.

This is not a "formation" it is a "cluster". These birds are feeding on tiny insects that are buzzing about. There are tens of millions of these bugs and the birds all hone in on these insects almost simultaneously (like an army of hungry men all grabbing for food off the same serving tray). These clusters will be seen, almost without exception, over fields/crops rather than forest canopies, as that is where the highest concentrations of insects will be.

Cool video, that's a heck of a lot birds. Now that's team work to not fly into each other.

Then you're going to love this clip:

Starling Swarm, with commentary

There're lots of clips of starlings, each incredibly beautiful. I'd love to see this in real life :O
3:25 gives me the goosebumps!

[edit on 10/7/08 by flice]

Yeah that's pretty amazing. It's like one creature made up of thousands of birds.

reply to post by SHADO13


First time I saw large flocks of birds swarming was in Senegal West Africa. The birds there were a crop pest and were a dreaded menace. They looked like starlings but I never heard what they were.

My question is, how do they communicate to fly like that?

awesome vids y'all! i have seen these kind of "formations" by swarms of bats around the I35 area here in austin. sucks when you are driving and see something like this bc it is truly an amazing sight that is hard to not watch.

reply to post by plumranch


They do not communicate their movements. They fly like that because they are chasing swarms of bugs. They appear to move as one, because they all have their eyes set on the same swarm of bugs.

just to note, there are edits in that video. maybe just to help the watcher keep engaged; but it is def' edited. --- i've also seen these in real life and they are amazing!!!! the video post is also amazing!!! gotta love symmetry out of chaos.

reply to post by no name needed


Ok, but I've seen birds fly in tight eradic formation up here in Alaska when not a bug was in the air. They seemed to be doing it out of sheer joy of flying.

In Africa the birds were not insect eaters as far as I know, they feasted on crops.

Also, insects don't fly very fast so they are not leading these birds around in these amazing patterns, IMHO. It is rediculous to think that the bugs fly these patterns right in front of the birds!

Again my question, how do the birds communicate to fly like this?

reply to post by no name needed


Actually, that's not entirely accurate (nor is it "wrong"). There's a bit more to their movement than just "the chase".

Such movements are a prime example of emergent behavior: the behavior is not a property of any individual bird, but rather emerges as a property of the group itself. There is no leader, no overall control; instead the flock's movements are determined by the moment-by-moment decisions of individual birds, following simple rules in response to interactions with their neighbors in the flock.
...
Reynolds' three fundamental "laws" of flocking are: (1) separation – steer to avoid crowding local flockmates; (2) alignment – steer towards the average heading of local flockmates; and (3) cohesion – steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates.

Source

So, basically it means there isn’t any communication (that we're aware of), it's just a set of rules they practise when moving inside a group.

reply to post by Gemwolf


Well, I'm just stating what I was taught was at Texas A&M University. I hold a B.S. in Wildlife Biology. You basically just stated what I said, there is not interaction between the birds, they (the birds on the exterior of the cluster) just go with the movement of the insects. Perhaps I should have been more specific about the birds on the interior of the cluster, as they can not necessarily see the insects (although they may); Rather, it is hypothesized that they follow the movements of the exterior members of the feeding cluster.

However, what my intention of posting this was to dis spell any thoughts or false assumptions that there is some sort of telepathy going on amongst the birds. That is simply not the case!

The rule you listed there are simply a manner in which the individuals of the cluster avoid collision (a self serving mechanism). Much the same way that traffic operates on the highway. It is done to protect one's self interests by navigating through traffic in a smooth, safe and timely manner.

Birds are definitely interesting creatures, that's for sure. They can see (or their brain processes) magnetic fields, which help guide them on their long journeys during migration. And I don't just mean migration from north to south (to warmer climates). I mean that it helps guide them to their particular territories (i.e., the same nesting locations) year in and year out.

[edit on 11-7-2008 by no name needed]

reply to post by no name needed


We're not here to compare brain-pans are we?

I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just wanted to "broaden" your explanation seeing that insects/prey aren't always involved in the unison movement of flocks/swarms/schools of animals.

The bottom line is, as you also confirmed, animals do not "communicate" with each other during a group movement.

truly beautiful . . . I've seen New York starlings do this, but not to this magnitude. Amazing birds; from what i've heard, they can mimic sounds better than most parrots too.

[edit on 7/11/2008 by JPhish]

Lots of thanks to the OP and to flice for posting these amazing videos! I have never seen anything like this before, it was a beautiful sight to watch those bird move like one enormous, fleeting wave through the air!

Great video, much thanks OP! I like how at about 1:17 the formation slowly turns and "flaps", looking for a moment like a giant Manta ray..... and then right after that what does it look like, for a brief moment? Yep. A disk, a classic UFO shape.