A week or so ago, I received an email with an unusual attachment. The YouTube clip was of Murmurations. I’ll link the clip because I think, like me you will be very impressed.
The term is much more encompassing than an
explanation of the various patterns the Swallows/Starlings make in their winter
migration to Great Britain. It speaks to
the ability of non-verbal species to communicate almost instantly intricate
commands that allow thousands to turn and make formations, almost instantly.
I was sharing my newfound knowledge with a golfer I
teamed up with and it reminded him of a man who trained crows to collect coins
for him. His story and his coin-collecting
machine are captured in another video clip, which I will link. It is a little longer, eight instead of two
minutes, but again is well worth the watch.
I was unaware of Joshua Klein and certainly was amazed at how much
communication crows share with each other. Now I understand why you can’t leave
a sandwich, even one that is boxed, in your golf cart when crows are nearby.
Who says you can’t learn new stuff after age sixty?
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Four Wings and a Prayer |
I had seen the Butterfly aviary in Victoria, but had
not realized that they might have been commenting on our presence as much as we
were commenting on theirs. Be careful
what you say in the presence of God’s other creatures.
I had experience with another example of murmurations
when we were living in the Philippine Islands.
At one time I had five salt water tanks, stocked for the most part with fish
we had caught in plastic bags while diving off the Subic Bay. One of the strangest was a group of little
black fish, none larger than an inch, which I caught as a swarm one day. There must have been forty or fifty of them,
and when I saw the original school there may have been hundreds.
They were swimming in formation, a formation that
made them appear to be a single, much larger fish, turning in unison, never
losing the illusion that they were something other, and much bigger, than they
were. They continued to maintain this
pattern in my tank and were a joy to watch as well as to show off to my
visitors. When we left, I returned them
to the bay, hopefully to find others of their species.
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Noctiluca |
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Luminescence from the shore |
I don’t know how much of this post you already knew,
but even if you knew everything this should make you more appreciative of the
world we see around us: its complexity and its mystery. Drop me a comment if you have other examples
of murmurations.
Today I had one of those Senior Moments, when I put
my cable bill check in my church envelope and had to swap out the two at the
Rectory later in the day. It wasn’t the
fact that the cable bill is more than my weekly contribution (something to
ponder) but it made me think about how
and why we contribute the way Mary and I do.
That might be worth exploring in my next posting.
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