It is mid-February after the coldest weeks I can remember in south-east Virginia. Our summer visitors are still wintering in balmier latitudes; they wont fly north for another month, but some locals are on the move.
A cloud of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds often land to feed on our lawn and chase smaller visitors off the bird feeders. The noisy, boisterous flocks look Hitchcockian, numbering a few hundred, but when I walked the dogs, I heard a vast twittering flock approaching from the east, too high to land nearby or even identify. (The headline image is not either of these species)
They kept coming and coming and coming. It took three minutes for the flock to pass. I estimated the column at over fifty wide, but they flew so fast I couldnt do more than guess at the total, certainly many tens of thousands, and likely ten times ten the number.
To use a hackneyed word they were awesome. But they didnt perform the kind of murmuration that Starlings are famous for, the collective acrobatics that forces a stop for watching the performance. The blackbird flock, probably a mixture of the two species plus some fellow travelers, flew in a steady stream toward an unknown roosting place under the setting sun. I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk race after a straggler. Theres safety in numbers except for tail-end Charlie!
Image credits, respectively: Pexels (Aleksandar Pasaric) and the late Inge Curtis
