For the Birds

They come in swarms each fall

In grayscale paisley swirls

Covering trees and the pastures

Of our five-acre world.

They land hard on the roof

Like pouring, driving rain

Looking like incoming bombers —

A thousand fighter planes.

Birds of a feather flock together. Boy, howdy! We get flocks of geese, flocks of ducks, and flocks of cranes flying over during the year. Nice. And in Austin, we had flocks of grackles; not so nice.

But we also get mammoth hordes of flying starlings that fill the sky, make the bare trees look like they've grown brown leaves when they land there, and make the ground look like an undulating life form when they land in the pastures. You can't see their heads; just their bodies moving. You'd think you were hallucinating.

But these birds are real, and they put Hitchcock's movie to shame. I was napping in a living room chair when they came, and the sound on the roof woke me up. I was disoriented at first, because it was not raining. Then I realized they were back.

I'm talking thousands and thousands of birds moving like an amoeba through the sky and then settling to peck at who knows what on the winter ground. The volume of their squawking defies description. "Noisy" doesn't begin to define it. It's unearthly.

When I sit in front of a window and watch them flying to land on the roof, it reminds me of the old WWII movies and shorts showing planes filling the skies, endless airplanes seemingly so close together you'd think they'd crash into each other...or the window. Neither ever happens.

Parts of this living cloud settles at slightly different rates, in different places. It's like being engulfed in fog; then it clears. The sight is mesmerizing and slightly terrifying. Then, as if of one mind, they all fly away in an eery, almost silent whoosh! You can feel the flapping of their wings more than see it; their departure sounds like a deep sigh of relief.