Osa’s View Sans Birds
It’s not unusual for Osa-the-Cat to sit in our East Room of an evening and watch TV with us. Although, she doesn’t usually watch. She and I play laser tag or, more frequently she positions herself aloofly apart from us and stares into the void. Last night however, she was sitting up straight, looking toward the ceiling and listening intently.
When she trotted toward the bay window and leapt up on the table to look outside, I followed to see what was of so much interest. She was staring back at the house and, as I matched the direction of her gaze, I saw a dozen or so birds perched up on the railing of the second floor balcony. Weird. And creepy, somehow.
Osa’s Starlings Looked A Lot Like This Photo From The Internet
I grabbed my camera and opened the east door ever so quietly, thinking that I might go out on the lawn and turn back for a quick photograph. But Osa was right behind me so I gently closed the door to leave her inside and that was all it took. The birds, in one soft flapping of wings, flew off toward the bay. Scores of them, not just dozens. And then another group came from the south garden – maybe from the holly trees in the lane.
Mega Creepy. They must have been all over our roof. Shades of Bodega Bay, Alfred Hitchcock, and 1963!
I think they were probably starlings, though at Osa’s early warning when I saw just a few, I thought they were swallows. But swallows never seem so sinister and, although they hang out in family units, I’ve never seen a hundred at a time.
Starlings, on the other hand, are very group minded. (Did you know that a starling flock is called a murmuration?) There was a fabulous video a while back made by two women canoeists (in Ireland I think) who witnessed millions of them on a migratory flight. I think you can find the film by Googling Murmuration Vimeo.
I loved seeing the video but I have to say, “Not in my backyard, please.”
One evening when we lived in Chinook I was outside getting the children in for dinner when a flock of starlings began circling over the house across the street. ‘Round and round they flew and one by one they dropped into the chimney until all were gone. I immediately thought of The Birds! I asked the boys, who had been in that house, where or not there was a fireplace. They confirmed that there was, but said it was boarded up like Aunt Mary’s. Fortunately, Aunt Mary didn’t have tenants in her chimney.! On a related and more recent spooky incident, last night I heard a bang that sounded like something falling off the bed about 3 AM. I couldn’t think WHAT it could have been. As I closed my eyes it happened again. Our daughter sleeps in the bedroom directly below so I wondered if she was in distress and trying to get our attention so I went down and checked on her. She was sleeping soundly. I stood outside our houseguest’s door. Quiet. I left our door ajar and got back in bed. Soon another bang. I looked and yhe door had banged shut and I remembered that even when closed that door will rattle and bang when all the upstairs windows are open so I solved the problem by opening it wide! So much for our having a Mrs. Crouch!
Stephanie, I think what you saw are chimney swifts. Don Stotts wrote me about the experience at his house on Sandridge Road last year. Even more amazing to me is the annual lay-over of the swifts at the Chapman School in Portland. Google it! Somehow, the swifts don’t seem as creepy to me as the starlings. Maybe it’s just that the starlings gather and sit there silently… At least the swifts are on a migration route and seem to have a purpose…
Could they have been dunlin sandpipers? I’d prefer to think that. They’re not creepy, but I agree — starlings are very creepy.
No, Linda, we see lots of sandpipers on the shore here but I’ve never heard of them roosting in trees and on rooftops.
We also have lots of starlings. We see them in the trees all the time. But I’ve never known them to gather on our house. These were definitely starlings. And most definitely creepy.
We were sitting in the kitchen last night when Wayne saw a huge group of starlings fly over our back yard. Maybe it was the same bunch. They seem to appear and disappear so quickly and they don’t like to hang with the robins in the yard.