Comments on: Flock of Seagulls?

Question: Flock of Seagulls?

DieHipsterDie — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:00:56 -0800

Did I imagine this flock of birds?

Once in the mid-70s I can recall a flock of birds flying over our house. They were in a line maybe 30 feet wide and it took minutes for them to fly over. They were maybe 50 feet above our house. I'd estimate that there had to be 25,000 birds.

The same thing happened circa '85.

Did I dream this? Or was it possibly real?

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:06:13 -0800

Starlings have been known to flock in number in excess of one million.

By: skynxnex

skynxnex — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:07:03 -0800

It's very possible that flocks of starlings can do that. I've seen flocks that took a minute or more to pass over. Do a google search starling flocks and you'll find links such as Black Sun in Denmark.

By: agregoli

agregoli — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:07:22 -0800

Possibly real, but how the heck do we know? Maybe you're completely hallucinatory.

By: DieHipsterDie

DieHipsterDie — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:08:01 -0800

I guess it was a silly question. Of course birds fly in huge flocks. They were just so low and it happened so long ago that the whole event now has the feel of a dream.

By: justkevin

justkevin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:10:14 -0800

Memories tend to exagerate events, but I've certainly seen super flocks in New England during migrations of what appeared to over a thousand birds at once.

I think starlings move in very large flocks, sometimes in the thousands. This page mentions a flock size near SeaTac of 100,000.

Where are you?

By: DieHipsterDie

DieHipsterDie — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:11:08 -0800

This occured in west-central Wisconsin.

By: Marla Singer

Marla Singer — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:12:34 -0800

I've seen some pretty huge flocks of starlings (a couple thousand at least), and the way they moved together was not unlike a school of fish, or a swarm of bees. Not quite the same, but it goes to show that birds can flock in really large numbers.

You say it happened twice and you're still not sure if it really happened? Huh? I'd say it probably happened. How old were you?

By: amro

amro — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:15:15 -0800

I've seen the same thing a few times, and it always seems surreal.

By: unknowncommand

unknowncommand — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:18:35 -0800

I've seen the same thing in Rome towards sunset. I assumed they were flying to their nests. It was crazy; the sky was almost black with birds.

By: dontoine

dontoine — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:30:23 -0800

I've seen the same thing in Rome--but from across the city. It looked like a giant veil was floating over the train station, disappearing and reappearing. I did wonder whether I was hallucinating.

By: scody

scody — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:31:19 -0800

Could they have been bats? The first time I saw a colony of bats (had to look that up to see what a group of them was called!) flying at dusk in St. Louis, I thought I was going to have a heart attack -- it looked like they filled half the sky.

By: lester

lester — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:01:06 -0800

i've seen lots of geese doing the traditional flying 'v' thing a couple of time here in chicago. once, i saw one up pretty high (maybe 1000+ feet) and it took a long time--over 5 minutes for them to pass. i could hear them honking, too. once in a while, in the fall on cloudy days, i hear the honking, but don't see any birds.

By: lester

lester — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:09:37 -0800

i should mention that when i saw that huge v--in the late 70's or early 80's, there was actually two huge flocks.

By: unknowncommand

unknowncommand — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:25:09 -0800

Ah dontoine, I was *at* the train station. That's weird.

By: luriete

luriete — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:53:52 -0800

We can get several thousand crows at once over Sacramento on a regular basis - they like to spend the night in a particular area downtown, near state office buildings that are empty at night. These are not hundreds of thousands, but several thousand enormous black crows that make a tremendous amount of noise. It can take 15 minutes for them to clear the sky over my house.

By: Rash

Rash — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:26:16 -0800

Just minutes to fly over? That's nothin' -- no cite handy but I've read of migrating flocks taking days to pass overhead, in pre-industrial America.

By: bitpart

bitpart — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:05:08 -0800

Rash might be referring to what I read as well:

"[Now-extinct passenger pigeons] lived in enormous flocks—the largest of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds."