Suddenly, a deep hum in the air drew our eyes upward. Hundreds of little birds were performing an aerial ballet right over our heads! We watched in disbelief.
They should have been colliding, dying, falling in a rain of feathered screams. Instead, each tiny body, a whisper away from calamity, merged, split, rose and descended as one mind-linked entity. Their intricate, spontaneous avian choreography was mesmerizing.
This marvelous twilight phenomenon is called murmuration. Nobody knows why it happens. In the end, it doesn’t matter.
We noticed that the dance would be best seen over the dam area a block away.
“Bikes!” Joe shouted! We feverishly pedaled to the dam two blocks away. I suddenly remembered Gail, my neighbor, emailing me about this phenomenon. “Dee, go to Union Street Bridge and watch the show just before sundown! You won’t believe it!”
I’d meant to, but had fallen asleep on the couch. Tonight I’d savor this wonder.
We whipped into the dam’s wide parking area and pulled over in the middle of its mostly empty parking lot. Perfect! Countless hundreds of sparrows? starlings? were flying high above us in perfect synchrony.
Joe took out his iPhone and began filming their dance in the dim evening light.
Huge numbers of birds flew as one mind, diving and rolling; every tiny body moved expertly in the same direction in the same microsecond, while maintaining a wingspan’s distance apart. I swear that at times there was only a molecule of air between bodies.
A thousand avians did spinning barrel rolls in huge, exactly synchronized formations; the sky turned jet black for an instant as two huge flocks merged from opposite directions, then instantly drew apart again to gain altitude. I began to ‘see’ familiar objects that morphed into others in a blink- a massive socked foot, a stretched out slinky, an enormous, spinning football, a tornado’s vortex, a duck’s head- before the birds shot straight toward heaven, only to split instantaneously into two flocks and dive straight down again, swerving only just above the big trees’ tops. I stood in the parking lot with my mouth wide open- a potentially perfect receptacle for bird-y residue- utterly captivated by their glorious ballet.
One huge group, after executing multiple acrobatic moves, landed as one at the top of a huge oak tree. Their excited chatter could be heard over the roar of the dam’s tumbling water. Within ten seconds every bird shot straight up together, which created a low, intense hum, a murmur, as it were, before they flew straight at another massive group flying directly toward them. The whole sky was their stage. There were so many birds coming from so many directions, doing so many stunning, perfectly executed moves around and through each other’s airspace that we felt dizzy and disoriented.
Then, deciding, they formed four huge, mind-linked flocks and landed one final time, coating every branch of the big trees lining the Boardman River. The sky was abandoned, just like that.
It was 7:20 p.m.
Twilight yielded to a blanket of rain-misted darkness. We stood there, rooted, speechless.
Once before we’d witnessed such a glorious show- at Portsmouth Harbor in England. There, it was soaring starlings. I thought I’d never see such a magnificent dance again. But here, in Traverse City, was a replay of Nature’s exuberance.
If you possibly can, make your way down Union Street to the dam just off Sixth Street, or park on the Union Street Bridge to witness this marvel, which begins at around 6:55 and lasts for just about twenty minutes.
Scientists wax eloquent about predator-evasion, and gabble on about flock behavior; I think birds mind-link to murmur-dance from the sheer joy- the pleasure- the challenge- of flying effortlessly, without a single mistake. They perform perfect sky ballets- because they can.