Why do starlings fly together

And I'm glad I got to know what the name of it is called now. It was a beautiful unbelievable sight to see as they covered our car as we went down the road and for miles on down the road they just intertwined and went up and down and up and over our vehicle. We caught the whole thing on video camera. Dec 9, Thanks for sharing your experience, kyle! Paul Turner Oct 22, We are running simulations with new thermal radar to identify approaching murmurations.

All the videos of murmurations are taken with "moving" video equipment to center the murmuration in the video. We are searching for murmuration video taken with "fixed" video equipment and we can filter out the non-moving background objects buildings, trees, clouds, etc any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance. Floyd Dec 7, Dec 11, Were there a lot of birds in it, Floyd? Nov 12, Hi Paul. PacJac Jan 8, Finally, I know what to call it. I know it sounds dumb, but for years I just called it "The Birdie Dance" because I didn't know what the technical term was. Thank you!

Jan 9, We also like your name for it, PacJac! Nan Nov 23, Is it still called a murmuration? Dec 27, Stephen Riley Jan 25, I have three different two minute videos on my phone.

Jan 29, Thank you for sharing your connection to this Wonder, Stephen! It's an amazing sight to see! Vada Lynn Dec 28, I was in shock to see the graceful display in Indianapolis, Indiana this last February Although, I've never been a bird watcher. It was an experience I'll never forget. Dec 28, Thank you for sharing your experience with us, Vada! It certainly can be quite splendid to see! Stephen Aug 20, My wife and I just saw a murmuration in Johnson City, Tennessee.

There were thousands of birds. It happened that we had binoculars handy and we got an excellent show for 10 minutes before the flock disappeared behind the treeline.

Stephen and Christine Johnson. Aug 22, Mark Gillett Feb 3, Whilst I am not about to argue with scientists about this, I will argue with the article. The starlings do NOT turn or move simultaneously. The follow the movement of the starling in front. If they moved simultaneously the formations would not move in a snake like pattern. So, to me there seems to be a conscious decision to follow.

Wonderopolis Feb 4, Wonderopolis Oct 29, Morgan Jul 19, I was fascinated by the murmuration in the video! Wonderopolis Jul 19, Ian Oct 31, Is the murmuration to scare other animals away before the flock lands? Just a thought. Wonderopolis Nov 1, This was very interesting thank you for sharing. Wonderopolis Mar 9, Louise Feb 18, Do you know if schools of fish that appear to move together have a name to describe it like murmuration does for starlings? And can the term be used for other birds that fly like this in unison?

Wonderopolis Feb 19, Thank you for this awesome video. Very cool and I'm feeling religious all of a sudden to boot! Wonderopolis Jan 28, Hi there, Laurie! We're glad our Wonder helped you think outside the box! Mark Rigler Jan 20, Wonderopolis Jan 21, You got it, Mark!

Thank you for helping us Wonder! That was so cool! Sincerely, Dani. Wonderopolis Jan 7, A murmuration is a beautiful sight to see, indeed, Danielle! We're glad you enjoyed it! Pat Jan 7, I live in North Texas, in the US. In the Northern Hemisphere, murmurations begin in fall and winter as the birds take rest stops of up to six weeks on their southern migrations. During this time, starlings may venture up to 60 miles a day from their roosting trees to feast on seeds, bugs, and larvae, then come back together to create murmurations that can last as long as 45 minutes.

Learn more about the epic journeys of migrating birds. Of course, birds moving in flocks is not a new behavior, and ornithologists have long studied it. But no other bird species flies together with the same coordination or complex patterns as European starlings, whose murmurations have been counted in numbers of up to , individuals.

University of Rome physicist Andrea Cavagna has spent the past 16 years studying how starlings synchronize their movements with such precision and grace. To do so, he has created sophisticated 3-D models of the starling flocks that swirl over Piazza dei Cinquecento in Rome , where the starling population has doubled over the past decade to about a million birds. Their recreations reveal that starlings maintain their fluid formations via a mechanism known as scale-free behavioral correlation , in which each bird positions itself next to approximately seven other birds, coordinating its movements to create an overlapping synchronicity.

Read more about animals that swarm. The result is collective decision making so agile that a signal to turn, usually initiated by a bird on the outskirts, can flash through a flock of birds in half a second— a speed of 90 miles per hour.

The various shapes and patterns the birds create during murmurations have picturesque names: vacuole, cordon, flash expansion. Perhaps most fascinating in appearance are the dark bands that radiate through a cloud of starlings like a moving stream, says Charlotte Hemelrijk , professor of evolutionary life sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

But actually they are visible when the birds bank upward, tilting to show a larger area of their wing to observers below. Read why birds matter, and are worth protecting.

Hemelrijk has also found evidence that these patterns serve to confuse predators, such as hawks and other birds of prey, and make it more difficult for them to pick off stragglers. Using sophisticated computer modeling, Hemelrijk has documented patterns of collective escape specifically tied to the movements of a predatory hawk or falcon.

Why European starlings circle the sky in such gigantic flocks for so long is a much more perplexing question. But Heppner and Cavagna say that defies logic; they point out that the birds could simply return directly to their roosts, rather than amassing into huge formations and spiraling across the sky. You have to ask yourself, how did a mechanism like this evolve? In an attempt to solve the mystery, researchers from the University of Gloucester and the Royal Society of Biology compiled data from more than 3, murmurations, data that volunteers in 23 countries collected in and By Gege Li.

James Crombie. THIS extraordinary image, taken as dusk approaches, looks like a soaring bird from a fantasy film. In reality, it is a murmuration — a huge swarm of starlings moving and pulsating as a single spectacular mass in the sky. Murmurations can comprise up to hundreds of thousands of flying starlings, though few are quite as dramatic as this one.