On the lazy Sunday morning of September 21 I awakened before dawn and could not get back to sleep. Out of boredom I got in my car and went for a ride, soon stopping at a do it yourself car wash to empty out the trash in my car. As the sun was just coming up I heard an horrific chorus of hundreds of birds chirping wildly behind me. I looked up and saw these birds gathered on some sort of tower across the street. Having nothing to do I stood and watched for several minutes.
       I witnessed what was clearly an age old ornithological ritual. About every 60 seconds a pack of about ten to twenty birds would fly off from the tower at top speed, always from west to east towards the rising sun. Similarly, at about the same interval, though not simultaneously with the birds flying away from the tower, a pack of about ten to twenty birds would fly onto the tower, again these birds always came from west of the tower towards the rising sun. All the while the hundreds of birds on the tower and the wires emanating from the tower were chirping wildly at each other. Clearly there was some sort of sophisticated advanced form of communication going on here although I cannot even hazard to guess what it was. Somebody must have done some serious studying of this behavior, if anyone knows what was going on please explain in the guestbook. This all happened on September 21 which is about 48 hours before the autumnal equinox, I don't know if this has anything to do with what I saw.
       There is no doubt in my mind that whoever wrote the story that became the classic Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds was inspired by viewing a scene such as this.


Links

Bodega Bay Navigator
The Birds, Hitchcock web site
The Birds: Will and Willfulness (This guy sees a lot of philosophic and psychological mumbo jumbo in the movie that just isn't there)