Murmuration

mur·mur·a·tion

/ˌmərməˈrāSHən/

noun

1. 1. 

   a flock of starlings.
2. 2. 

   Literary

   the action of murmuring.

   "the murmuration of a flock of warblers"

   
   

   Yours truly is totally mesmerized by starling flocks, an endlessly complex and fluid motion driven by thousands of birds and dictated by very simple rules along the lines of Conway's Game of Life. 

   
   

   This most intricate and mysterious part of a murmuration occurs when a predator enters the frame, which is nearly impossible to see with the naked eye. Depending on the density of the flock and speed of the predator, the starlings’ reactions can take many escape patterns, including flying outward to create a vacuole—an empty space. Or they might fly swiftly in one direction, producing a pulsation through the flock resembling a wave. “It's only when they get attacked by predators, especially falcons, that they create these amazing images in the sky,” Solkær says.

   
   

   The shapes formed by the starlings’ anxious flight for survival can also be used to confuse their predators. Each bird will mimic the motion of its nearest neighbors, angling its back toward the predators.

   
   

   

   
   

   PHOTOGRAPH: SØREN SOLKÆR

   Hundreds of thousands of starlings create a gradient from light to solid black in Aventoft, Denmark.

    “This one reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting.”

   
   

   The science behind the starling murmurations ...

   
   

   To understand what the starlings are doing, we begin back in 1987 when the pioneering computer scientist Craig Reynolds created a simulation of a flock of birds. These "boids", as Reynolds called his computer-generated creatures, followed only three simple rules to create their different patterns of movement: nearby birds would move further apart, birds would align their direction and speed, and more distant birds would move closer.

   
   

   Some of these patterns were then used to create realistic looking animal groups in films, starting with Batman Returns in 1992 and its swarms of bats and "army" of penguins. Crucially this model did not require any long-range guidance, or supernatural powers – only local interactions. Reynolds's model proved a complex flock was indeed possible through individuals following basic rules, and the resulting groups certainly "looked" like those in nature.