I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. Psalm 50.
As a friend said, witnessing things like the bird flights in the video reminds me just how big and majestic God is. Below is a video of an acrobatic flock of starlings performing aerobatic maneuvers in Scotland. This is an annual evening performance in select areas.
Here's another mystery of nature: No one knows why they do it , yet each fall , thousands of starlings dance in the twilight above England and Scotland. The birds gather in shape-shifting flocks called murmurations, having migrated in the millions from Russia and Scandinavia to escape winter's frigid bite. Scientists aren't sure how they do it, either. The starlings' murmurations are manifestations of swarm intelligence, Which in different contexts is practiced by schools of fish, swarms of bees, and colonies of ants.
As far as I am aware , even complex algorithmic models haven't yet explained the starlings' aerobatics , which rely on the tiny birds' quicksilver reaction time of under 100 milliseconds , to avoid aerial collisions - and predators - in the giant flock . Despite their tour de force in the dusky sky, starlings have declined significantly in the UK in recent years, perhaps because of a decline in suitable nesting sites. The birds still roost in several of Britain 's rural pastures, however, settling down to sleep, (and chatter) , after their evening ballet. Two young ladies were out for a late afternoon canoe ride and fortunately one of them remembered to bring her video camera. What they saw was a wonderful murmuration display, caught in the short video - URL is below. Watch the variation of color and intensity of the patterns that the birds make in proximity to one other, and take a look at the girl in the bow of the canoe watching the aerial display. What an incredible event to witness! ! Enjoy ..
Below is more information from an online article in Wired Science.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/starling-flock/
Video of a massive starling flock turning and twisting over a river in Ireland has gone viral, and with good reason. Flocking starlings are one of nature's most extraordinary sights: Just a few hundred birds moving as one is enough to convey a sense of suspended reality, and the flock filmed above the River Shannon contained thousands.
What makes possible the uncanny coordination of these murmurations, as starling flocks are so beautifully known? Until recently, it was hard to say. Scientists had to wait for the tools of high-powered video analysis and computational modeling. And when these were finally applied to starlings, they revealed patterns known less from biology than cutting-edge physics.
Starling flocks, it turns out, are best described with equations of "critical transitions" - systems that are poised to tip, to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas. Each starling in a flock is connected to every other. When a flock turns in unison, it's a phase transition.
At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock's size and speed and its members' flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. What's complicated, or at least unknown, is how criticality is created and maintained.
It's easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns - but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? That remains to be discovered, and the implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may simply be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological criticality that also seems to operate in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet to be understood.
