I’ve now spent several hours watching YouTube murmurations.
I’m enthralled.
I desperately want to experience this first-hand.
Once, I think I came close.
My family was fishing early in the morning along the levee on the Sacramento River.
And then—
a dense black river of starlings moved east,
just yards above the water.
It was continuous.
Feathered, silent, determined.
It must’ve lasted an hour, with hardly a gap.
No spirals. No sky dances.
Just direction. Purpose.
They had somewhere to go.
Funny thing—later that afternoon, they came back.
Same density. Same direction.
A returning wave of black wings
blotting out the sun.
I remember reading once about herds of bison
that took days to cross a river.
Then—just a few short years,
and mountains of bones later—
they were gone.
Murdered, almost as successfully as the dodo.
Yes—man can change the environment.
And he has.
But back to murmurations.
I can’t imagine how signals are communicated so quickly—
or so accurately.
“Wait—you want me to follow you?”
“Where are we going?”
“What do you mean it’s partly up to me?”
It’s beyond human understanding.
An instantaneous collective thought.
Maybe these patterns are three-dimensional ideas,
written above fields and rivers—
ephemeral as breath.
Maybe, someday, our recordings will be deciphered.
Maybe we’ll understand the language of the flock.
Will it be something profound?
Will it echo ancient truth?
Or will it simply say:
“I’m cold… and hungry.”
A Work Progressing 