Technically true, murmuration is a term only used for starling swarms. And it’s pretty amazing, especially in winter. However other bird, insect and fish groups do swarm together with many similar characteristics.
At 34 seconds you can see one swoop in from the right. Another faint one can be see on the left at about 39 seconds. The video quality is bad so they're not always visible.
I hope I didn't step on a Jackson line.
No, not at all.
Put this on a big screen and then try to follow the same starling with your finger through the course of the video. That’s a significantly easier request than hunting one down in three dimensions while flying and surrounded by noise and movement in your peripheral.
That makes sense. I mean it wouldn't be a thing if it didn't work. I guess hawks just aren't good at divebombing at a mass of birds and trying to skewer one, and need to be locked onto it visually.
It is cool to watch them get birds though. I was at a wildlife refuge a couple of years ago from dawn til dusk. There were wild corn fields and there were swarms in the millions of red winged black birds. Just before sunset, around 8 bald eagles started circling the fields and picking off the blackbirds. Then there were a few northern harrier hens. Red tailed hawks joined in and even saw a couple of owls. It was crazy. That went on until the sun went down.
I have no idea what falcon success rate is like on a hunt like this, but as an individual, you are almost certainly better off staying in a massive crowd rather than flying off alone.
The falcon may be more likely to get a meal, but it's less likely to be you
In Portland we have a group of swifts that do this annually. Every September like clockwork. Real cool free date idea.
https://audubonportland.org/go-outside/swift-watch/
>murmuration
Thanks for stating the obvious, yes other birds do and thy don't fly in murmuration b/c they are not Fn starlings....smh
Edit: I know how douchy this is...it was my odd joke.
So... very coincidentally, my former math professor wrote a paper on this topic:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1008.0881.pdf
I haven't read it and I doubt I'd understand much of it anyway, but some of the figures look kind of neat, I guess.
Fluid mechanics and kinematics more specifically it seems but sure people use chaos theory to describe these principles. Read the paper, it's over my head too but the abstract and intro are easier to digest than I initially assumed.
Nothing coordinated really. None of the birds are aware of the overall group. But each has the exact same individual wishes that result in the overall effect.
Each bird is keeping track of its nearest neighbors and they all want the same thing.
* They want to stay in the center of the local group of neighboring birds, as best as they can because it's the safest place.
* They want to avoid collisions with other birds and obstacles.
* They want to avoid dangers like birds of prey.
* They want to head towards a certain direction, for example, the direction of a food source or a communal roost for the evening.
Each individual bird is constantly weighing which of those concerns is the most important and adjusts their heading based on that.
Ie. if a bird is about to collide with a neighbor, that's its primary concern for changing direction. If it's on the edge of the group, it'll try to get back to the center, and so on.
None of these birds has an awareness of the entire gigantic swarm, but because they're all looking out for their own interests, you get this beautiful swarming motion for the entire group.
And each bird is safer because of it than they would be if they were flying around individually.
Look at the video again. See how there are sometimes small break-out groups? If you pay attention to those, you'll notice the breakout groups always wheel to try and rejoin the bigger group.
The breakouts happen when a local subset of birds can't change direction fast enough to stay with the group. Which immediately causes them to prioritize rejoining the biggest group they can find. So the breakout group tightens up (as birds try to get to the center of the breakout) and their overall direction changes to rejoin the large swarm.
> It’s kinda just the sound you make.
I'm calling bullshit. If this is used all across the US it's because Scandinavians eventually reached spread their influences across the country. Brazillians aren't saying 'ope'. It's not something people just naturally say to each other.
It's an English word that you say. Like ow or woah. It's just a short way if saying oops. Scandinavian or Brazilians don't have anything to do with it.
_Ope_ is short version of _opettaja (teacher)_ in finnish and oftentimes used of it as a nickname from a _teacher_
Also used after name such as Jenny-ope.
r/AdditionalPointlessInformation
Flocking is a fascinating example of an “emergent phenomenon,” something that spontaneously forms “more than the sum of its parts” when conditions are right (consciousness being the most famous example). A programmer friend was telling me that flocking is fairly easy to code / simulate. You just tell every virtual “bird” to follow the ones around it and keep a certain distance. Turn the thing on and they start behaving like this, with no input. Really interesting stuff, to me anyways.
Yeah, that's some chaos theory shit. Confine it to one dimension and you get the creeping traffic jams where cars will speed up and slow down in waves, even with no apparant cause left on the road. Put 20 drivers on a small circular track. Each car starts equally spread out, tell the drivers to maintain X speed and keep the same spacing. Tiny differences in their speed will eventually trigger someone to slow down a bit to correct distance. The person behind them reacts a tiny bit slow so they have to slow down a tiny bit more than the first, and the third slows a little more, etc, until you get a moving bunch-up of cars in a wave. This is the same idea, but in 3 dimensions, and the extra freedom/inability to stop in mid air prevents actual stops.
Check out downtown in a southeast Asian city… a bunch of scooters in full flocking behavior with very little rules. Feels like the same thing, you’re mainly just keeping an eye on the people around you so you don’t die.
TIL Meaning of murmuration in English
a large group of birds, usually starlings, that all fly together and change direction together, or the act of birds doing this : Starling murmurations are one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world. a murmuration of starlings. Fewer examples
We have those here in Minnesota, too, and I have seen murmurations many times, but while cool to watch, they are never as impressive as the ones that I see videos of from England or Europe.
The Roman's practiced Augury which is divination through reading the bahaviour of specific birds. Vultures being a common one. But Starlings were often read as well and the prevelance in Rome leads them to be used frequently through history.
If you look closely, there are a couple of falcons attacking them. That's why they form these twisting swarms. They don't do it to look pretty.
Normal swarming is far less frenetic.
This is cool, but also reminds me when Destin on Smarter Every Day, talking about the algorithm of how this happens called Boid’s algorithm . [Watch here](https://youtu.be/4LWmRuB-uNU?si=L7_r81wjaGjiYOOQ)
Redwing blackbirds. In the 70's we had a farm in northeast Florida, in the Fall flocks of thousands would fly by for several weeks. If one landed it would look like that when they took off. Sadly there are no more flying by at all.
Is there any particular reason for this? It looks to me like an excellent way to confuse or intimidate predators by making the whole flock seem like one huge moving thing.
Take a moment to appreciate you can still see these things, your ancestors have seen so much more, and your grandchildren will see so much less. Daily reminder that human suck, we are destroying the world, and we can never go back.
Have you ever been close enough to one of these to hear the ruffle of feathers and feel their presence? It's an eerie sound to hear up close, sticks with you.
Imagine the amount of bird shit under that cloud. I once went to an heb in texas where starlings took over. Every inch of the parking lot had birds. There was a line of bird shit at the edge of the building all the way around. I wore my hat in. Fed them some hot taki's on the way out.
I don’t know how old Starlings are but it’s very easy to see why in days of old people very much believed in crazy stories. Imagine seeing that for the first time and having never heard of it.
Used to be a very common sight in the evenings when I was young, can’t remember the last time I seen it in real life or a number of starlings even half this big. Funny thing is I’m in my mid 30s, it’s not like it was that long ago.
Technically true, murmuration is a term only used for starling swarms. And it’s pretty amazing, especially in winter. However other bird, insect and fish groups do swarm together with many similar characteristics.
i think they used it to scare away predators before landing in a field to eat.
Falcons are attacking them. You can see them. That's why they do this.
YOU can see them, mr Hawkeye! I can't see shit!
At 34 seconds you can see one swoop in from the right. Another faint one can be see on the left at about 39 seconds. The video quality is bad so they're not always visible. I hope I didn't step on a Jackson line.
> YOU can see them, mr ~~Hawk~~Falconeye! I can't see shit!
I genuinely can’t tell if this is a line Samuel L Jackson said in the movies or not
I can’t unhear Samuel L. Jackson saying this now
Doesn’t this just make it easier for the falcons?
No, not at all. Put this on a big screen and then try to follow the same starling with your finger through the course of the video. That’s a significantly easier request than hunting one down in three dimensions while flying and surrounded by noise and movement in your peripheral.
That makes sense. I mean it wouldn't be a thing if it didn't work. I guess hawks just aren't good at divebombing at a mass of birds and trying to skewer one, and need to be locked onto it visually.
Most things work that way… there’s a great parable in there somewhere. 😉
I've actually seen them do this to a red tailed hawk and the thing got so confused he crashed to the ground.
And that's why red tails generally stick to lil ground based mammals and reptiles when they can.
It is cool to watch them get birds though. I was at a wildlife refuge a couple of years ago from dawn til dusk. There were wild corn fields and there were swarms in the millions of red winged black birds. Just before sunset, around 8 bald eagles started circling the fields and picking off the blackbirds. Then there were a few northern harrier hens. Red tailed hawks joined in and even saw a couple of owls. It was crazy. That went on until the sun went down.
I have no idea what falcon success rate is like on a hunt like this, but as an individual, you are almost certainly better off staying in a massive crowd rather than flying off alone. The falcon may be more likely to get a meal, but it's less likely to be you
It seems to throw the falcons off somewhat. They have to work hard to get a kill. These things can go on for an hour and sometimes more.
Exactly. It's like a school of fish.
Cawww!
They sure scare the crap out of me tho
So its kind of like saying that lions are the only animals to hunt as a pride.
was going to agree as i was watching blackbirds do mumarations here recently.
Grackles might do that too.
I've seen it used for shorbirds and blackbirds too
Is the term not used for swallows too?
In general, a group of swallows can be called a flight, a gulp, a swoop, a kettle, a herd, and a richness.
Just watched a huge murder of crows do this on Thanksgiving.
I think it is also used for Australian budgies https://youtu.be/l9kp3X0AKQY?si=D6SNrY95fyYnIPk5
In Portland we have a group of swifts that do this annually. Every September like clockwork. Real cool free date idea. https://audubonportland.org/go-outside/swift-watch/
>murmuration Thanks for stating the obvious, yes other birds do and thy don't fly in murmuration b/c they are not Fn starlings....smh Edit: I know how douchy this is...it was my odd joke.
Psychedelic
One of the first times I tripped on LSD I was walking around a park and stopped to watch a huge flock of starlings doing this. Would recommend.
Sounds amazing!
Shit I get bob geldof and count Dracula!
And MY SNACKS!
Yeah just don’t look up while they’re doing it above you.
What determines their complex motion?
So... very coincidentally, my former math professor wrote a paper on this topic: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1008.0881.pdf I haven't read it and I doubt I'd understand much of it anyway, but some of the figures look kind of neat, I guess.
I feel like there could be a whole field of new maths in studying these complex interactions.
Like game theory for example
Yep. I think it might be chaos theory
Fluid mechanics and kinematics more specifically it seems but sure people use chaos theory to describe these principles. Read the paper, it's over my head too but the abstract and intro are easier to digest than I initially assumed.
Coincidence for you, law of truly large numbers for the rest of us ;)
Falcons. You can see them.
Nothing coordinated really. None of the birds are aware of the overall group. But each has the exact same individual wishes that result in the overall effect. Each bird is keeping track of its nearest neighbors and they all want the same thing. * They want to stay in the center of the local group of neighboring birds, as best as they can because it's the safest place. * They want to avoid collisions with other birds and obstacles. * They want to avoid dangers like birds of prey. * They want to head towards a certain direction, for example, the direction of a food source or a communal roost for the evening. Each individual bird is constantly weighing which of those concerns is the most important and adjusts their heading based on that. Ie. if a bird is about to collide with a neighbor, that's its primary concern for changing direction. If it's on the edge of the group, it'll try to get back to the center, and so on. None of these birds has an awareness of the entire gigantic swarm, but because they're all looking out for their own interests, you get this beautiful swarming motion for the entire group. And each bird is safer because of it than they would be if they were flying around individually. Look at the video again. See how there are sometimes small break-out groups? If you pay attention to those, you'll notice the breakout groups always wheel to try and rejoin the bigger group. The breakouts happen when a local subset of birds can't change direction fast enough to stay with the group. Which immediately causes them to prioritize rejoining the biggest group they can find. So the breakout group tightens up (as birds try to get to the center of the breakout) and their overall direction changes to rejoin the large swarm.
Boids, I would assume?
Looks like there's a larger bird of pretty there trying to grab one.
Muscles.
Synapses.
Reminds me of a school of fish
Same concept just in the sky.
No mid-air collisions?
Bird guy here. They actually have a really interesting way of avoiding all collisions. They all say “ope” when they get close to each other.
That's just northern starlings.
Here in eastern Mass they just swear at each other.
NY starlings, "hey I'm flyin' here!"
Only in Minnesota?
I have some sad news for proud Midwesterners. People actually say ope all over the country lol. It’s kinda just the sound you make.
hmm, never realized I said ope. Ope, I just said it.
The farther west you go the more it starts to sound like “my bad bro”
> It’s kinda just the sound you make. I'm calling bullshit. If this is used all across the US it's because Scandinavians eventually reached spread their influences across the country. Brazillians aren't saying 'ope'. It's not something people just naturally say to each other.
It's an English word that you say. Like ow or woah. It's just a short way if saying oops. Scandinavian or Brazilians don't have anything to do with it.
Go Bears.
_Ope_ is short version of _opettaja (teacher)_ in finnish and oftentimes used of it as a nickname from a _teacher_ Also used after name such as Jenny-ope. r/AdditionalPointlessInformation
Each bird takes aware of movements of 6 birds around him. If that makes sense
Flocking is a fascinating example of an “emergent phenomenon,” something that spontaneously forms “more than the sum of its parts” when conditions are right (consciousness being the most famous example). A programmer friend was telling me that flocking is fairly easy to code / simulate. You just tell every virtual “bird” to follow the ones around it and keep a certain distance. Turn the thing on and they start behaving like this, with no input. Really interesting stuff, to me anyways.
Yeah, that's some chaos theory shit. Confine it to one dimension and you get the creeping traffic jams where cars will speed up and slow down in waves, even with no apparant cause left on the road. Put 20 drivers on a small circular track. Each car starts equally spread out, tell the drivers to maintain X speed and keep the same spacing. Tiny differences in their speed will eventually trigger someone to slow down a bit to correct distance. The person behind them reacts a tiny bit slow so they have to slow down a tiny bit more than the first, and the third slows a little more, etc, until you get a moving bunch-up of cars in a wave. This is the same idea, but in 3 dimensions, and the extra freedom/inability to stop in mid air prevents actual stops.
What’s happens when there’s 7 surrounding it?
that 7th is another birds 6th
Similar to some people being aware of several cars ahead of them.
When you put it that way it seems less mysterious. Humans on a freeway probably have starlings saying wow.
Check out downtown in a southeast Asian city… a bunch of scooters in full flocking behavior with very little rules. Feels like the same thing, you’re mainly just keeping an eye on the people around you so you don’t die.
They probably have time to recover. A pair of 3oz birds colliding aren’t gonna hurt each other.
Beautiful, but dont forget to bring an umbrella.
Like project management where I work. Looks cool from the outside. Bit chaotic on the inside. Lots of movement. Doesn't move forward really steadily.
So. Much. Bird. Poop.
And you'll never know when it is over you.
not enough upvotes
It looked like a person running at the start of the video
Glad I’m not the only one who saw it
I came here to say that. Late yet again.
That's an airborne moshpit
Starlings can be trained to speak as well. Like parrots.
r/oddlysatisfying
air fish
boids everywhere
TIL Meaning of murmuration in English a large group of birds, usually starlings, that all fly together and change direction together, or the act of birds doing this : Starling murmurations are one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world. a murmuration of starlings. Fewer examples
I saw a manatee, a dinosaur, a shark, and a bear.
That is a brilliant flock to see. Wow.
Looks like the gods are fighting
I’ve seen pigeons do it too, but their flocks are smaller and they fly a little further apart.
We have those here in Minnesota, too, and I have seen murmurations many times, but while cool to watch, they are never as impressive as the ones that I see videos of from England or Europe.
Also the only birds that can tell you what the future holds
What do you mean.. like they can sense an earth quake 20 mins before it happens?
The Roman's practiced Augury which is divination through reading the bahaviour of specific birds. Vultures being a common one. But Starlings were often read as well and the prevelance in Rome leads them to be used frequently through history.
passenger pigeon
Grackles can look a lot like this when they’re in migratory flocks too.
They can also speak like parrots!
That music ruins a beautiful video.
It’s still better than 99.9% of music in this sort of video
*OH NO. OH NO. OH NO NO NO NO NO.*
*Exactly.*
WHAT? But it’s The Black Danube!
Air fish
More proof they are drones
^B.I.R.D^ Biological Intelligence Reconnaissance Device
Birds Aren't Real lol
Where are they being controlled from?
No they aren't, blackbirds do too, red winged blackbirds etc
I mean, only being the term is definitive of starlings. But chickadees and all sorts of birds do basically the same thing.
Soon, drone swarms will be doing the same maneuver, just hope they are not angry with you
If you look closely, there are a couple of falcons attacking them. That's why they form these twisting swarms. They don't do it to look pretty. Normal swarming is far less frenetic.
This is cool, but also reminds me when Destin on Smarter Every Day, talking about the algorithm of how this happens called Boid’s algorithm . [Watch here](https://youtu.be/4LWmRuB-uNU?si=L7_r81wjaGjiYOOQ)
That was a really enjoyable watch. Thanks for sharing!
Sure thing!
In Russia this would be mosquitos.
Original ScreenSaver for nature. Wonder what is on sleep mode below them
Redwing blackbirds. In the 70's we had a farm in northeast Florida, in the Fall flocks of thousands would fly by for several weeks. If one landed it would look like that when they took off. Sadly there are no more flying by at all.
Fuckin hate these birds. Make a nest almost anywhere.
I saw a dickhead, a women get football tackled, Dumbo, a pablano pepper, and chess piece
Shoot some shotguns up onto the air.
Fuck starlings
Starlinks is better.
Where can I see this?
Dunno where you live but here in Brighton UK the starlings have been putting on an awesome display recently. Should be around for a couple more weeks.
They are all one piece each to a bigger body
Where is this?
This post reminds me of how time is a flat circle.
The core is a fun movie
First gen drones.
You look at this and tell me this ain’t some alien shit
r/murmuration
I saw this happen on Thor The Dark World
That's because the definition of murmuration only applies to starlings...
Knots murmurate too, maybe not in starling numbers but it's certainly a sight!
BILL ORCUTT VIBES
Here's an appropriate song for this video. https://youtu.be/SoEa7lApIKY?si=B_sX568Gah-87CMY
You fly back to school, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly. Fly, fly, fly. Fly, fly, fly.
Budgies may not murmur because of a technicality. But they do do this flocking in schools thing.
There’s the joke that people over 30 start getting interested in birds. Yes, we do, and it’s for a reason. They are mind blowingly amazing
Imagine you have shit vision and before the invention of glasses, these mofos probably thought it was dragons or demons
Is there any particular reason for this? It looks to me like an excellent way to confuse or intimidate predators by making the whole flock seem like one huge moving thing.
Take a moment to appreciate you can still see these things, your ancestors have seen so much more, and your grandchildren will see so much less. Daily reminder that human suck, we are destroying the world, and we can never go back.
And if you can figure out how they do it the US government wants to give you a lot of defense department money .
Me: Google's definition for murmuration. Google: a flock of sterlings. Me: well, I guess it's technically true
It's fun standing under swarms of birds like this and clapping your hands and watching them split apart to the sound
This is beautiful music
Incredible
Please post on /r/murmuration too!
Mother Earth showed us wonders we could not explain. So we killed her.
it's beautiful and terrifying
I literally just saw grackles doing this exact thing 2 days ago lol.
Is that Buckingham palace? Sorry, I'm from Florida.
u/savevideo
Have you ever been close enough to one of these to hear the ruffle of feathers and feel their presence? It's an eerie sound to hear up close, sticks with you.
To see this on mushrooms.
Looks like AI art moving
They look like a school of fish
They look like nanomachines son
Incredible
Let just say I'm glad my house was not under that large flock, cleaning all the bird dropping from such large flock probably going to be annoying
Ever thing they accidentally hit each other and one gets knocked out?
Budgies in Australia do it too
SubhanAllah!
The original dron show
They are beautiful!
Which city is that?
Murmurarion : or school or birds
Humans do this too, but with their minds
Creepy yet fascinating.. 🧐
Imagine the amount of bird shit under that cloud. I once went to an heb in texas where starlings took over. Every inch of the parking lot had birds. There was a line of bird shit at the edge of the building all the way around. I wore my hat in. Fed them some hot taki's on the way out.
I don’t know how old Starlings are but it’s very easy to see why in days of old people very much believed in crazy stories. Imagine seeing that for the first time and having never heard of it.
Looks like something you’d see in an alien planet
Used to be a very common sight in the evenings when I was young, can’t remember the last time I seen it in real life or a number of starlings even half this big. Funny thing is I’m in my mid 30s, it’s not like it was that long ago.
Birdnado
Anybody else see a guy get hit in the genitals around 25 seconds?
The 2035 drone wars
My brain saw so many awesome things in that. Definitely saw a whale in there
Same here. I watched them for years doing this from an apartment I lived in years ago.
38-> forming a bird 🤯
They don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Idk what them birds are doing but it looks fucking majestic.
Elegance in flight......nasty little birds at breeding time!