So yesterday I was walking down a quiet suburban street when I noticed an enormous flock of birds hanging out on someone’s lawn a few houses down the road. I don’t usually see birds there, and this was… just masses of them. As I walked closer, they took off in unison to land in someone else’s yard about another two houses down. I thought it was a pretty remarkable thing to observe as they continued evading me by moving just a little bit farther ahead.
About halfway down the road, we were still playing our little game. The birds were on yet another person’s front lawn as I moved closer. And closer. They weren’t flying away for some reason. I got unusually close and then suddenly this entire mass of birds just rose up in front of me and flew toward me. They way they moved in unison made them look like ocean waves. I just stood there in awe as the bird wave came crashing forward. Then the wave finally ‘‘hit’’ me and I was literally standing inside a flock of airborne birds. I was so close I could have reached out and touched them. I could see detail in the tail feathers and I could hear the sound of their tiny little wings fluttering all around me. I don’t know how else to describe it, the sound was magical, and the feeling was so all-encompassing it took my breath away.
I love nature, but the feeling of awe as those birds flew by was something different. It was as if nature was sharing a secret. How many people are lucky enough to have an experience like that? Probably not too many.
ETA: Oooh, oooh, idea! Everyone share their amazing nature stories!
That really does sound cool! Mine is less impressive, but still kind of cool - we visited the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco recently, and I apparently was wearing a shirt that butterflies love! The butterflies kept coming and sitting on me - I had to gently nudge them to fly away.
Kind of sad but morbidly funny story: My kids found a dead bird, laying on the cement in front of a building with windows. I happened to gaze upon the window and saw what appeared to be the outline of a flying bird, wings fully extended.
I haven’t been “inside” a flying flock of birds, but I’ve been overflown by large flocks (snow geese, cormorants, sandhill cranes,etc) at very low altitude a couple of times. The sound of their calls, all of those wings flapping, and the feeling that they’re looking at you right in the eye is awe-inspiring.
There is a flock of about two dozen sparrows that visit my patio daily and shelter in the two camelia bushes there. About two weeks ago, I was sitting at my table that overlooks the patio when a hawk landed on the fence next to the sparrows’ favorite bush not eight feet from me! Such a gorgeous bird! It sat there just long enough to let me get a good look at it, then it dove into the bush, claimed one of the sparrows and sped off.
I know some of you will think that’s sad but it’s also a marvel to see at such close range. I was later able to identify the hawk as a female Cooper’s.
There’s a group that I vacation with in Cape May every year. One year for some reason no one could get there the first evening but me and one other person, so we went and bought a pizza for dinner and climbed up in the lifeguard stand to eat it. Naturally, that attracted a flock of gulls who swarmed around us till we were done. We were six or eight feet off the ground, and it was really vivid and amazing.
A few years ago when we had a really, really snowy winter, I looked out my front window and saw a hawk of some sort sitting on a mound of snow about 6 feet or so from the window. He/She LOOKED at me. I mean really, really, looked at me, with an incredibly piercing stare. as if to look right through me. I was very glad at that moment that I was inside and not a small bird or mammal. The hawk returned to plucking at something I couldn’t see. When I went out later there were some bloody feathers.
I have a patio off my kitchen at the back of the house. Once, upon entering the kitchen, I saw in the backyard a huge flock of starlings resting on the patio and grass. There were so many! As I stepped up to the glass a couple of the nearer birds saw me and started up. I quickly opened the door just as the rest of the flock sprung up into the air with this giant “whumpf” sound. It was terrific.
When I was in high school I was having a really bad day once, and I was crying in the back yard. Then a butterfly landed on my knee. I no longer remember what I was sad about, but I still remember that butterfly.
Once I was walking around a lake in the winter. There was a transparent film of ice over most of it, with a small, unfrozen area crowded with swimming ducks. A lone male mallard swooped down for what he obviously thought would be a typical splashdown…only to skid halfway across the lake, quacking all the way. It was hilarious. When he came to a stop, he took off again and landed again, with the same result, making me wonder if he was doing it for fun or just didn’t understand what was wrong with the lake.
Many moons ago a downy woodpecker crashed into my mother’s picture window and fell to the porch. My mother didn’t want to deal with it so I picked up woody and put him in a shoebox, planning to keep him for about 5 minutes before burial in case he was just unconscious. After the required number of minutes I decided to put the lid on the box and get the shovel but just at that moment woody cranked his eye open and saw me looming over him.
I’d never seen anything move so fast. Within a second he was out of the box and over the roof of the house.
When my mother asked me what happened I just said “I guess he’ll be okay.”
